Authorities in Saudi Arabia have requested that the 264 passengers on board Nigeria’s Air Peace’s flight to Jeddah have their visas revoked.
Because of intense lobbying by Nigerian embassy representatives, Saudi authorities only permitted 87 of the 264 passengers to board the aircraft.
The aircraft arrived in the largest city in Saudi Arabia on Monday without any problems after taking off from Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and travelling via Aminu Kano International Airport in Kano on Sunday night. However, Saudi authorities announced that all of the passengers’ visas had been revoked upon landing.
A source claims that the cancellation of the visas surprised both the passengers and the airline staff because, prior to the flight’s departure from Nigeria, the passengers had to go through the Advanced Passengers Pre-screening System (APPS), which was also under surveillance by Saudi Arabian authorities.
Since the airline had been recording high load factors since it started operations, the insider questioned whether what had happened was a plot to dissuade it from flying to the destination.
Even the Tuesday departure flight to Jeddah, he said, was already fully booked.
It was reported that Saudi authorities had reduced the number of individuals who will be repatriated from 264 to 177 after the Nigerian embassy intervened.
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As a Nigerian airline, Air Peace helps the nation save foreign exchange by enjoying high patronage since it started offering relatively low fares to the Middle Eastern country.
Even Saudi immigration authorities claimed they didn’t know who cancelled the visas but that they were cancelled while the jet was still in the air, bound for Jeddah, according to a source at the Nigerian embassy in Jeddah.
According to the source, the airline was cleared of all charges since any passengers with invalid visas would have been filtered out by the Advanced Passenger Pre-screening System (APPS), which is in place between the two nations. All impacted passengers were accepted by the system and proceeded.
Air Peace has already departed with the 177 passengers who were deported, returning them to Nigeria.
“They are currently on their way to Nigeria,” the insider stated.
Industry watchers ascribed this to aeropolitics, pointing out that, without government intervention and the adoption of the reciprocity principle, it is a means of driving the Nigerian operator off the route.
Group Captain John Ojikutu, an industry expert and the CEO of Centurion Aviation Security and Safety Consult, Nigeria, responded to the incident by blaming the Saudis’ actions on aeropolitics and diplomacy. He also urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene in the matter right away.
According to him, the events demonstrated the need for the Nigerian government to firmly support any Nigerian airline authorised to serve foreign locations.
Ojikutu stated that Nigeria ought to identify Nigerian airlines as flag carriers, pointing out that although the US does not have a national airline, all of its airlines are subsidised by the government and recognised as such.
“The action of the Saudi Authorities is shocking,” he said. There is diplomacy there as well as aeropolitics. To let other nations realise that Nigerian carriers are Nigeria’s representatives, the Nigerian government must support Nigerian carriers and designate them as flag carriers.
“The government needs to step up and take action. To guarantee that Air Peace is not deprived of its rights as stipulated in the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) between the two nations, the government must support Air Peace immediately. The Foreign Affairs Ministry cannot remain silent. Nigeria can’t be silent. Ideally, any national airline that the government authorises to travel abroad will have the support of the government.
