Aero Resumes Flights, Recalls Workers

Nigeria’s major carrier, Aero Contractors resumed flights yesterday after recalling over 600 workers it sacked about two weeks ago. The airline stopped its operation and sacked over 600 of its workers a fortnight ago when it had industrial disagreement with the staff, who were protesting over the plan to outsource part of its manpower as cost-cutting measure. But when it wanted to resume operations the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) insisted that it must carry out re-evaluation exercise in order to restore its operational certificate. THISDAY learnt that what delayed the re-evaluation was that the airline’s manpower was very low for its operational capacity, so NCAA insisted that it must beef up its manpower by recalling the workers before it would be allowed to resume operation. At its Lagos operational base at the domestic terminal of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos (MAA2), Aero workers were   seen yesterday selling tickets to customers and there were officials of the airline at the check-in counters. THISDAY also learnt, from one of the workers who was hitherto sacked got a message from Aero management to resume work yesterday morning and the same message was relayed to other workers of the airline. THISDAY visited the ticket sales counters yesterday and at 2 pm passengers were still trickling in because there was no prior information about the airline’s resumption of flights. Meanwhile, thousands of passengers who wanted to travel for the Easter holiday thronged the ticketing and check-in counters of Arik Air at the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) of the Lagos airport yesterday. The crowd that was almost uncontrollable created a chaotic atmosphere that it was extremely difficult to walk into the airport terminal, particularly if the person has luggage Thisday