Passengers struggle to board Arik Air flight in Portharcourt (VIDEO)

By Kaymi on October 31, 2013@dailystarngnews

culled from Lailasblog

A passenger, @Onliskcarew, who was on an overbooked Arik air flight from Port Harcourt to Lagos has shared his very ugly, disappointing experience which he caught on tape.

According to him, Arik Air, on the 24th of October, 2013, sold more travel tickets than the plane could carry.
Passengers when they all now showed up to board for their journey had no other option than to rush, struggle to board.

@Onliskcarew said:

I was rather surprised at the service rendered by Arik Air Nigeria (one of Nigeria’s local flight operators) on the 24th of October 2013.

Despite the purchase of a valid travel ticket for the 1530hrs flight from Portharcourt to Lagos (PHC to LOS), Arik Air sold more tickets than the plane could carry (why for goodness sakes???).

We the passengers were left stranded on the tarmac and to be honest, I was really baffled
and amazed at the level of poor communication within Arik Air.

Although it was not a safe environment, the ground staff were forced to handle things by themselves, and also had to make decisions without support and steer from the management who I would have assumed would know how to advice the Arik employees on the ground.

This got me thinking on how exposed these poor ground staff were, and also the extremely poor communication within the management of Arik Air. The staff were lucky not to have been violently attacked by the angry passengers who where left frustrated on the tarmac.

Nonetheless, we eventually made it to Lagos with my 11 suitcases at around 10pm but had to travel via Abuja.

This left me with no option than to reschedule my trip overseas for the next day, pay for a night in a hotel, got my driver waiting for hours in the airport, move around in Lagos very late at night, and the worst part, miss my birthday dinner planned for me in Lagos.

Thanks Arik Air.

Now Arik Air, some advice. Although it seems not be a culture of caring for your customers, please try and support your ground staff a lot better.

These guys are at the end of your delivery and they play a key role to the image of your organisation. These poor guys on the ground get all the trouble due to the management’s poor logistic planning, rather selfish way of thinking, poor communication, and arrogant approach towards customers (who have paid for ticket hence, a service rather than a favour).

As a company, I expect you all to make life easy for the ground staff, the same way those of you at the top do for yourselves. What will it take for you managers to think about this and understand the long term implications this causes to your organization?

This is not directed at low level managers but those of you right at the top. This has been highly disgraceful and I am highly disappointed at all the people that manage/run Arik Air on a day to day basis.