Passengers who sneeze onboard will be treated as COVID-19 case - Aero Contractors boss

Ado Sanusi, the chief executive officer of Aero Contractors has urged prospective passengers with cold or malaria not to come to the airport as they will be treated as suspected Coronavirus cases onboard a flight.

Sanusi who said this in a Channels Television programme on Thursday July 1, also disclosed that the airline has made arrangements to isolate suspected cases to ensure the safety of all passengers.

He said;

“I will like to point out that if you have malaria or a common cold, do not come to the airport because there is a high possibility that you are going to be denied boarding.

“This is the new normal that we are going to see.

“The main thing for the airlines is to make sure that the aeroplanes are safe and that is what we’re doing and that’s why we still believe that air transportation is the safest way to travel.

“So if we see anybody sneezing, we will take him as an index passenger, we are not going to he/she has allergies. We are going to take the person as index passenger till we have handed them over to port health officials. They will be the ones to determine if he is allergic or has COVID-19."

He affirmed that passengers with doctor's report saying that they have malaria, will also not be allowed to board any flight.

Sanusi added;

“My airline will not allow a passenger that comes with a doctor’s report saying he has malaria I would rather that he comes with a COVID-19 test result that he is free which is only valid for four days.

“If you have malaria, please sit at home and when you get better, you can travel.”

On airlines leaving the middle seats empty, he said;

“If we have data that shows that if we block the centre seats, it will reduce the rate of transmission then we will do that and increase the flight costs because somebody must pay for the centre seats."

Sanusi further revealed that they will no longer be serving in-flight meals as passengers would have to remove their face masks to eat such.

He said;

“There won’t be serving of food because that will increase the number of times you will be contacting passengers and then the passengers would be removing their face masks to eat the food so I think it is not the best.

“It is a one hour flight. It is only in Nigeria that we serve food for a one-hour flight. Go anywhere in the world and you will see that hot meals are not served on one-hour flights.”