Turkish Airlines has announced it is cancelling all flights to Nigeria due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The airline through a statement said it was cancelling all flights slated to depart from Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, the three international airports it operates in.
According to reports, the Turkish Airlines had called off 14 flights in total, with 3 in Lagos, 6 in Abuja and 5 in Port Harcourt. The Airline had taken the decision also because the traffic in the country had reduced drastically.
A source said, “In some cases, we found that only 20 passengers booked and it doesn’t make economic sense to go ahead with such a trip. We had to provide refund for them and apologized.”
Adding the new development from the Turkish Airlines, which brought in the index case of an Italian with Coronavirus into Nigeria to the case of other airlines that have taken drastic decisions to cancel flights, it is clear that airlines’ losses could mount beyond the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecast that airlines would make a loss of over $113 billion as a result of the deadly virus.
Noteworthy also is the fact that that many international carriers were taking drastic measures to limit the spread of the deadly Coronavirus by cancelling flights and modifying their routes. Some of these airlines include American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Delta Airlines, Air Seoul, Oman Air, Air Mauritius, JejuAir Co Ltd, Qatar Airways, RwandAir, Scoot (Singapore Airlines), Saudia (Saudi Arabia’s state airline) and Kenya Airways, amongst others.
Just last week, one of the best airlines in the world, Emirates Airlines had reportedly asked its employees to embark on unpaid leave for up to a month due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus disease. The airline had also cancelled flights to Iran, Bahrain and to most of China because of the virus, as countries around the world continue to place strict restrictions on the entry of foreigners.
