The National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) has described as a “mere phantom” the sack of seven Nigerian employees by Turkish Airlines for alleged $600, 000 ticket racketeering.
The union made the denial in a statement signed by its general secretary, Mr Ochema Aba.
The airline alleged that the sack of the Nigerian staff was a clear case of racism practiced by the European carrier.
Part of the statement reads: The claim that the airline lost $600,000 is mere phantom. What happened is that sometime in April, 2023, Turkish Airlines’ headquarters issued a sales restriction circular which allowed sales of only two premium classes of tickets as a response to foreign airlines’ difficulty in repatriating their proceeds to home countries due to foreign exchange constraints in Nigeria. But, in a contradicting manner the Airline had an advertised fare on the website which was much lower than the permitted fares. Therefore, intending passengers who accessed such fare, but could not pay online were directed by the global call centre to approach the Nigerian offices. As the workers could not attend to the customers due to the sales restriction, the passengers resorted to creating ugly scenes at the sales offices which became riotous at times.
“As an image saving measure, the then sales manager asked the sales staff to use the PNR obtained online by the customers to process the tickets if the Airline’s booking system could route the tickets. The sales staff simply complied. As a matter of fact, the then sales manager, a Turkish national, sold the tickets too to confirm that this was the local management’s approved approach to resolving the problem created by the website.
“The airline’s accountants received all due monies from all tickets sold and all sales report were daily submitted to sales manager, signed by him and accounts department and scanned to HQ. If monies were not fully received, the account would not have balanced, and sales could not have been concluded. Therefore, no monies belonging to Turkish Airlines is missing. And no staff has taken any monies belonging to Turkish Airlines. Importantly, no staff had any pecuniary benefit from the so called internet sales.
“It is, therefore, disingenuous for the general manager to hold the workers to the charge of failure to comply with the sales restrictions when it is clear that shortcomings on the part of the airlines ICT (on the website) combined with Local management’s decisions on managing an otherwise ugly situation were responsible for the sales in question.
It is on record that the general manager since his assumption of office in May, “2023 has strangely adopted subterfuge and strong-arm tactics to create a stuffy and toxic atmosphere in the Turkish Airlines workplace. He has employed threat, intimidation and blackmail to induce fear among the workers in order to force the workers to worship him as a demigod.”
