Ebola virus: FG suspends airline operations from Liberia, Sierra Leone

The Federal Government has ordered the suspension of flight operations from Liberia and Sierra Leone into Nigerian. Benedict Adeyileka, the Acting Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, (NCAA) who made this announcement yesterday said the regulatory authority had to take this action to protect Nigeria from the deadly Ebola virus which is ravaging some parts of West, East and Central Africa.                                              
According to Adeyileka, Asky Airlines which operates scheduled flight operations between Nigeria and the two West African states has been ordered to suspend all flights into Nigeria. “ASky Airline operations to Nigeria has been suspended with immediate effect,” said Adeyileka.
“Arik Air which had earlier suspended their flights to Monrovia and Freetown has been advised to maintain the cessation of flights until cleared by NCAA,” he added.                                                      Asky becomes the second airline, after indigenous carrier Arik Air suspended its services into the two countries from Nigeria.
A-Sky Airline is an important player in the West, East and Central Africa operating 80 flights into Lagos and Abuja weekly. The Airline flew Mr. Patrick Sawyer, a consultant to the Liberian Ministry of Finance who was obviously infected with the virus into Lagos, Nigeria which created panic and diverted world attention to Nigeria.
The passenger has since died, forcing the Lagos State government to close down the hospital and quarantine about 59 people suspected to have made contact with the late Mr. Sawyer before and after he died. The Country Manager of the ASky was subsequently invited to the NCAA to offer explanation to the authority on the incident and show evidence of actions taken by the airline since the pandemic in their core areas of operationbroke out.
But the airline is representative could not offer any conclusive or substantial evidence neither did he demonstrate any capacity to be able to prevent a reoccurrence of flying in  Ebola victims to Nigeria.
Consequently, the Acting Director General and the top management of NCAA therefore decided that the lives of millions of Nigerians were too precious to be risked on a platter of negligence of an airline.
The airline operations was therefore suspended with immediate effect until it is able to sufficiently and evidently prove that adequate machinery has been put in place to provide adequate screening of passengers in all their points of operation including profiling of each passenger.