Banky W Sheds Light On Arik-Air Flight Debacle

Banky W, one of the passengers on the Arik Air flight from Lagos to New York on March 31, 2014, shed light on what really happened aboard the flight and TATTLES agrees with him on most of the points he made.  Though we might not publish the full article, we’ll try to capture the important parts.

“Recently, footage from a camera phone has surfaced online about the dire circumstances that passengers suffered prior to take-off, on board an Arik Air flight from Lagos to New York. I was one of the passengers.  The flight was scheduled to take off at about 11:50pm on March 31, 2014. Boarding was completed on time and all the passengers settled in their seats and prepared for take-off. However, there seemed to be a delay in operations, because although the ground crew had exited the aircraft and the cabin doors were shut, we weren’t moving. The pilot announced that there was a small delay in the ground crew operations on the plane, and that we should be patient as the flight would depart “in a few minutes”.  The problem was [that] the air conditioning was not turned on. Midnight soon passed and there was still no A/C, neither did it feel like we were going anywhere anytime soon. Passengers were vigorously fanning themselves, asking for water and ice from the crew and doing whatever they could to stay cool and hydrated. The reality was that the heat in the plane was, quite frankly, unbearable.  It’s hot enough in Nigeria these days and then you couple that with a cabin whose doors have been shut and a bunch of people locked inside that enclosed space… suffice it to say it escalated from bad to worse very quickly…”

The article in general was written with the aim of getting Arik Airlines to improve on their services. TATTLES hereby hopes that other celebrities will learn from Banky W and use their ‘star power’ to make companies who mistreat Nigerians learn from their mistakes and give Nigerians the best services.

Going further, Banky also made a point which we are sure resounded clearly in the minds of those who read the article. “I’m a proud Nigerian,” he said “and I’m a fan of all things good that are Nigerian. We have many issues as a country, but I’ve always been of the opinion that we have to fix ourselves. We have to police ourselves and play our part in changing Nigeria and making her better. As such, whenever possible, I try to support Nigerian-owned businesses. My suits, for instance, are made by Mai Atafo; he has impressed me so much that I now refuse to buy suits from anywhere else in the world, because of the quality of his craftsmanship; and it is a source of pride for me when I’m asked by colleagues, clients and fans around the world where I got my suit from, and I’m able to tell them that it was made by a Nigerian designer…”

That said, though most people still shy away from using made-in-Nigeria products, embracing them remains one of the ways the world will see us in a positive light.