Med-View suspends international flight operations

Struggling Nigerian carrier, Med-View Airline has suspended international operations while also reducing regional routes on its flight schedule to just two cities.

A source, on Tuesday, said the airline, which once had about six aircraft in its fleet has suspended flight operations to Gatwick, London, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

It was gathered that the airline suspended flight operations to London and Jeddah in February this year, while it had earlier in January stopped operations to Dubai.

The airline had in November 2015 commenced operations to London and by December of that year, started Jeddah route.

But its operations to Dubai, which began in November 2017, lasted only two months as the airline suspended flight to the route in January 2018.

In the sub-region, the airline has suspended operations to Dakar (Senegal), Accra (Ghana) and Abidjan (Cote D’Ivoire), but still operates skeletal flights to Monrovia (Liberia) and Freetown (Sierra Leone).

The airline is reportedly indebted to the Ghanaian authorities, which had threatened to impound its aircraft if it operates into its airspace.

“It’s bad that Med-View, like its predecessors, is going down. The airline now owes the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and several organizations that render service to it, including a company that supplies it with onboard menus. This is so bad.

“Because of inadequate aircraft in its fleet, it had to stop operations to London, Jeddah and Dubai even though it boasted that it would return to Dubai by the end of last months. The company is yet to do so. Most of the lessors have to retrieve their aircraft from the airline when it could not meet its contractual obligations with those companies and all these are happening despite being quoted on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE),” a source at the airline said, 

Investigations show that the two remaining aircraft in the fleet of the troubled airline are two Boeing 737-400, which it uses for local operations.

The airline, which is the sole Nigerian carrier listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, claimed to have earned $5 million profit in the past financial year, but the airline is also hugely indebted to various organizations including the catering service that supplies it onboard refreshment.