FATIMA Bio, the wife of Sierra Leone’s President Julius Bio, has taken to Facebook to complain about the ‘abysmal treatment’ she and other passengers received from Air France while waiting for their flight from Paris to Conakry via Freetown.
The First Lady’s post on social media has been welcomed by many Sierra Leoneans who regularly complain about the off-handed manner in which they are being treated by Air France.
In her post last week, Mrs Bio said that after sitting on the plane for two hours, she and the other passengers were asked to disembark ‘because [the plane] was faulty’.
She added: ‘Thank God we didn’t have a situation after we had flown and we were up in the air.’
Mrs Bio said things did not improve either after the passengers moved to another plane.
‘We sat in there for another two hours only for the pilot to then announce that we could not travel any longer because the crew [had] gone over their time.
‘They asked everyone to leave the plane with no other explanation,’ she added.
‘Women with children were left roaming the airport not knowing what to do and there was no one from Air France to help them,’ the First Lady’s account continued.
‘People in wheelchairs were crisscrossing the terminal to find a place to rest and there was no one from Air France to help them.’
She said she could not understand why the Air France crew of 12 that ‘did not travel or do anything can go on to ground more than 150 passengers and then treat them in a very inhumane manner’.
The passengers were able to fly out of Paris the next day, with Mrs Bio noting: ‘So, after the abysmal treatment yesterday, we are now going to try our luck today with the flight. ‘Hopefully we will today finally succeed to go home.
‘Air France, change your bad ways because we are now watching you,’ she added.
Air France did not respond to questions from Africa Briefing.
The whole episode is symptomatic of the shabby treatment passengers from Sierra Leone have had to put up with while flying between Freetown and Paris on Air France, Africa Briefing has been told by irate passengers.
‘The problem is that there are currently no regular direct flights between Freetown and the UK, where the majority of Sierra Leoneans and those of Sierra Leonean descent residing in Europe live,’ an aviation source told Africa Briefing.
Since the Ebola outbreak in 2015 in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, there have been no scheduled flights between the UK and Sierra Leone, forcing passengers to travel via European airports.
In this period there have been just one or two charter flights during Christmas.
In her post, Mrs Bio called on ‘African heads of state…[to] engage the management of Air France and demand better treatment for our people’.
But Air France’s long-suffering passengers do not think that this is necessary.
‘African leaders have better things to do than engage with Air France,’ one told Africa Briefing.
‘What is obviously needed is for the government in Sierra Leone to make moves to reinstate direct flights between the country and the UK.’
This matter was brought up during the UK-Sierra Leone investment conference in London in 2019 but nothing seems to have come out of the discussions.
However, Africa Briefing has been told that there have been offers by private interests to start regular scheduled flights between Sierra Leone and the UK.
‘It’s down to the government in Freetown to do the right thing and we will be able to provide regular flights,’ one interested party told Africa Briefing.
The need for such flights is becoming dire because there is talk of passengers that are connecting to flights from the continent soon being asked to pay for transit visas.
This requirement will just add to the cost and inconvenience of flying to the UK via Europe, according to aviation sources.
