Russia/Ukraine: Evacuation flight from Poland to Nigeria postponed – FG

An Air Peace charter flight scheduled to evacuate Nigerians fleeing Ukraine from Poland on Thursday has been postponed.

According to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, Bolaji Akinremi, the flight was postponed due to delay in preparing passengers for check-in.

The flight has now been scheduled for Friday morning.

He said: “The reality is that the flight has been rescheduled to tomorrow the main reason is the delay in doing the checking because they have to gather them together from different hotels.

“By the time we will be ready after the checking in, the crew that has been waiting for us since 9 am have overshot the hour they should have waited because they have a duty hour which has been allocated to them and they had waited from 9 am till 2 pm that means they have already waited for 5hours.

“They are going to have a 9hours flight that is already more than the standard, so the authority of the airport said they won’t allow us to board.

“This is the reality, we have to calm down but arrangements have been made that we all stay together in the same hotel and that we will leave very early tomorrow 4 am we will be on the bus and then we can join the flight.”

About 2,000 Nigerians have fled Ukraine, amid a Russian invasion, to neigbouring countries, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama.

The Federal Government on Wednesday said it has approved $8.5m for the evacuation of citizens.

According to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zubairu Dada, the countries where the pickup flights would be headed include – Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania.

Two flights from Air Peace and one from Max Air are expected to carry out the evacuation exercise.