Throughout last week I was in Nigeria. First, I wanted to talk about the security fears of most people since Nigeria seems to be gradually feeling the plague of merciless terrorists known popularly as Boko Haram, who kidnap and slaughter in broad daylight and more recently have started bombing anywhere they like. Especially after an incident where the airport security wanted me to open my suitcase myself because he said it could explode!
Anyway, all that seemed like it would be on my radar to rant about until I encountered yet another lousy trip on Arik Air. I was initially going to spare them the bad publicity and let it slip but why have I chosen to talk about it? Because it was not the first time Arik Air has given its customers like me sub-standard service. Somewhere a little over two months ago, they delayed my flight from Lagos to Accra for a good 3 hours. Arik started by explaining that there would be a 10 minute delay, which turned into 30 minutes, one hour…until they stopped apologizing and started serving us juice and cupcakes. Amazing level of incompetence.
Well, on the 18th, my flight W3 075 Y was scheduled to leave Lagos at 5pm, I got to the airport by 2 pm because check in was to start at 3pm. I waited for a bit and approached the counter; I was told the flight had been moved to 7pm. I wasn’t amused but I kept calm. Then an hour later, many people started queuing to check in, while we were queued checking in, a dark, big woman who they said was the manager came and called for our attention. She said she had bad news. I got scared because I know these Arik people; they are number one with crap services.