Seven of the airliners operating at the Port Harcourt International Airport weekend threatened to boycott the route if the authorities failed to carry out a bird searing activity on the airport within seven days.
The airline operators handed down the ultimatum to the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) after an emergency meeting in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
According to the airline operators, there was urgent need for FAAN to carry out a bird searing activity out on the airport, to save their business, failure to do so in seven days would attract the suspension of flight activities at the airport.
Sources at the airport said that between last Sunday and Friday, birds damaged two aircraft engines, a situation that forced one of the affected airlines, Aero Contractors to suspend its flight to Abuja temporarily last Sunday after discovering a damage to the aircraft engine by bird strike while about to take off. The aircraft reportedly returned to the tarmac after the incident.
Further, another airliner, whose engines were affected by bird strike, was said to have written to FAAN to pay compensation to the damaged engine of the aircraft, stating that the airline spent over N10 million to replace the damaged engine.
The airlines specifically accused FAAN of an inability to provide a safe atmosphere for flights operations at the airport despite the several fees and taxes that they pay to the Authority. In a quick response to the threat, , the Managing Director of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Engr Femi Shittu, has already apologised to the affected airlines and said the airlines knew that FAAN was doing everything to partner with them.
Engr Shittu said the management of FAAN was making sure that some of those problems that crop up from time to time do not happen again, and appealed to the airlines to exercise patience, adding that FAAN was doing its best to embark on the birds searing exercise.