A Dose of Virgin Nigeria

I remember a mild drama many years ago when I traveled by Nigeria Airways from Abuja (or so) to Lagos. Something had happened which led to exchange of hate words between a middle-aged female passenger and the pilot. While the woman boasted that she could feed the pilot and his family, and demanded to know his salary, the latter gladly announced several times to the hearing of everyone on board that he was very comfortable with a posh home in Ikoyi. That was probably the first and only time (I am not sure now) I patronized our dear rested airline. The drama continued for more than 30 minutes and I found the whole scenario quite embarrassing.

I hear that Virgin Atlantic was chosen to help develop our flag carrier, Virgin Nigeria Airlines, in which it probably owns a 49% stake. Why did Richard Branson decide to take this image risk? I am told that the English celebrity business tycoon enjoys having the Virgin brand everywhere, e.g. international music mega-stores, air travel, mobile, financial, retail, music, Internet, drinks, rail, hotels and leisure, with about 200 companies in over 30 countries. But the London-Nigeria traffic should not be ignored too because of its high revenue potential.

I decided to patronize, for the first time, Virgin Nigeria on a return journey to London last December for a couple of reasons one of which was the personality behind the brand, Branson. At 17 this gentleman had established a charity, Student Advisory Centre (SAC), to help young people and in 1999 he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Millennium New Year’s Honours List for “services to entrepreneurship.”

A trip scheduled for 5 p.m. on a Sunday, saw us checking in from 1 p.m. and nobody said anything about an impending delay. At the check-in lounge I bumped into a former post-graduate school mate who was also traveling to London but with her family and I engaged the husband in a discussion. Ironically it was from him that I learnt that our flight would not take off until 8.30 p.m. despite personally approaching the check-in staff more than thrice earlier to know what was responsible for the delay. All I could get from them was: “we shall soon leave.” There was no announcement at all to explain the problem and I also noticed that affected passengers behaved like they were used to delays.

In my case, I needed to communicate my actual arrival time to my prospective host who was to come to the airport for me. I was therefore very confused especially when my phone battery could no longer absorb the strain of placing several calls to him over there on happenings. Our aircraft came in late alright from Johannesburg (this I learnt from one of the passengers) but we did not board until several hours after its arrival.

The air hostesses were nice to me but certainly not to some others, e.g. my friend’s husband actually created a scene and promised to ensure one of them got sacked; his grouse was that he was treated shabbily by one of them. On the other side of my isle was an elderly woman (accompanied probably by her mature daughter) who needed the attention of another air hostess positioned by one of the exits but all she got was “I cannot leave my position”. It was touching when my friend’s husband repeatedly said “Do not try to turn this airline into another Nigeria Airways because we will not allow that to happen.”

If you ask me that was rugged patriotism. My wonderful host had to wait in the cold for my arrival at 1.00hrs (we are presently one hour ahead) and six hours later he was ready for work. I had the privilege of also visiting London last summer via Emirates Airlines, which I sincerely hold in high esteem because of their excellent services. My trip then was devoid of any insolent delay except that I had to connect a second flight in Dubai. Though an arduous journey, it was entertaining while it lasted. I was not ready for another long trip this time despite Emirates’ affordable London flight and so I jumped at Virgin Nigeria’s promotional offer in December. But was it frustrating! I actually began to be apprehensive about my decision when I received no reply to my pre-travel email demanding to know details about my trip; my friend’s travel agent had obtained an e-ticket for me.

It was not until I visited the airline’s desk at Lagos Sheraton, where I was attending a function, that I got my inquiry answered. Before then I had called the numbers on the airline’s press advertisements only for a man to interrogate me on how I got the numbers- imagine he did not even know that his number was in his company’s advertising material! Meanwhile I found it hard to believe one of my London-based friends when he said Alitalia had to refund his family and other passengers and still flew them to Rome as a result of a similar delay sometime last year. Why should Virgin Nigeria not treat its delayed passengers the same way?

I was to leave London 20 days later for Lagos at 0.20hrs on a Saturday and it was my host again who had to take me to Gatwick at about 19.00hrs. I was one of the early birds because I was through with my check-in rituals by 20.30hrs. However, the British ground staff was polite enough to break the bad news to you, as he handed you your boarding pass, that boarding would commence at 1 a.m. prior to your 3.00 a. m. departure! This time we were lucky enough to have £5 written off our tickets by way of a food voucher and up I went via escalator to MacDonald’s to exchange it for a burger, etc.

Thank God that I was entitled to free texts and calls in the UK that weekend courtesy of my Vodafone mobile and I occupied myself doing just that until I came across some old friends of mine billed for the same flight. When we eventually boarded all I wanted to do was eat and sleep because I knew I would have to execute some assignments immediately I arrived in Lagos. Guess what woke me up- some ranting passengers berating one of the hostesses for rationing Tom Tom sweets when she should have allowed them to have a field day! One of them, a male, took pains to analyze how several airlines treat their passengers with dignity and expressed disgust at Virgin’s disdainful reception.

On my part, I could not use the multi-media headphones given to me because they almost deafened me on my Lagos-London trip; the sound quality of movies and music played was simply hazardous to the human ear. Coincidentally, I met one of the owners of the company responsible for supplying the entertainment tools, a fellow Nigerian who lives two doors away from me in Bromley. He gracefully corroborated my allegation and assured me that things would get better in the New Year.

It is true that all airlines including the best in the world do experience one technical hitch or the other but the manner in which they treat their customers makes the difference. Before we finally boarded in Lagos it was a woman who was screaming curse words at a Virgin Nigeria staff for throwing her passport at her after issuing her boarding pass. It was different with the white staff at Gatwick- they were very courteous. Why did somebody not offer us ‘hunger voucher’ in Lagos? Not even an apology! It was only the ‘oyinbo’ pilot that announced his apology while we were airborne and I could not understand the point our ‘arrival’ Immigration official was trying to make when he shouted to our queues in Lagos that “ those of you carrying foreign passports apart from Nigerian passports should join this other ‘line’ to have your passports stamped.”

I think I will fly Virgin Nigeria again because it is really very ‘Nigerian’ (with all the theatricals) though I never got to see any Jollof Rice let alone eat some.