Lagos Airport Review

We’re beginning our long trek back to Lagos today.

It starts with a 9.5-hour flight to Amsterdam, followed by a 7-hour layover, followed by a final 6.5-hour flight. With over 30 hours of travel time door-to-door, I’m guaranteed to be the worst version of myself by the time we arrive.

In a week the kids’ will begin their 3rd school year in Nigeria. I have no idea how that’s possible, but here we are. As I’ve packed the boys and I up over the past few days, I’ve been feeling all the feelings, but especially anxiety.

It’s times like this when I wonder why Capri Sun hasn’t invented an adult version of their juice packs, but instead of fruit punch you punch the straw in and get a small dose of nitrous oxide. I could probably make it through the 2 long flights and the dreaded Nigerian airport, solo with kids if I had something of this nature.

It’s easily the airport I’m dreading the most, even over flying (and I hate flying). Which is why I think today’s post is good one for sharing part one of my friend Holly’s nightmare story of leaving as it begins in the airport. Part two of her story will come in the future as it was too long to put all in one place.

This was done in interview format. I’ve written my questions and comments in regular font and hers in bold font.

1. Tell us about the Nigerian airport on a regular day:

Steve (another one of our campmates) has traveled more than anyone I’ve ever met, and even he calls Lagos airport the worst. So, I feel fairly confident calling it the worst airport in the world.

The bathrooms are dirty: they have wet floors, no toilet paper or paper towels and yet, there’s always a lady sitting there expecting you to pay her…I don’t know what for?

There’s almost no edible food, except for the Heineken Lounge, although per your Instagram stories, there’s occasionally bugs that fly around there.

I would like to inform you that the “bugs flying around” which Holly is referring to here, are more specifically, roaches. And, yes, I have proof as I once filmed a roach flying around at this lounge for my Instagram stories. As I was filming the roach slowly began raising its antennas into the air and waving them back and forth. Then, it started flying my direction, at which point the video became chaotic and I began doing a panic-dance. This raised some initial questions with the workers, such as, “are OK” and “are you alright?” but their concern quickly dissipated when I told them it was a roach. “Oh, sorry, sorry,” they replied as if I had said I was out of coke.

One other thing worth mentioning about the Heineken Lounge is that it’s smoky in there. While most of the US has banned indoor smoking, the Heineken Lounge in Lagos enjoys exposing its customers to plenty of second-hand smoke. What’s air quality, anyway?

Outside of the lounge, the airport has all of these flashing fluorescent lights everywhere which is sketchy. The AC doesn’t work well, and mind you, it’s super-hot in Nigeria.

And then sometimes they just close the airline check in desk because they’ve oversold the flight, and this is how they’re deciding who makes it on the plane.

Also, they still use manual ticketing; nothing is electronic. You can’t check in electronically or get an electronic boarding pass. It all has to be done manually, which takes a long time.

I’ll add that, because of this, you also get no flight updates on your phone or app. For example, in a normal airport, you can look on your app to find where your gate is. If it changes, the app will update that. In Nigeria - best of luck to you. They typically hand-write the gate on the boarding pass, but if they forget (which has happened) or if it changes, I hope you’re agile and fast on your feet. The same with flight delays and cancellations, there is no electronic messaging for this. You also can’t check in electronically ahead of time for any flights coming or going to Nigeria. Type A friends, you’ll never survive.

The airport has no monitors or screens to update any flight or gate status and has very little signage as to what gate numbers are located where. It’s often hot and poorly lit (as Holly mentioned earlier). It almost feels like a haunted house experience as you try to navigate to or from your gate.

What else is fun about the Nigerian airport?

Oh, they recently made a brand-new wing. But the people who made the plans were either being cheap or crooked and stole the design plans from another airport. They didn’t realize that the international planes that fly in and out of Nigeria are much bigger, so the international planes don’t fit in the new wing, and everyone has to take shuttles to the international planes which are forced to park out on the runway.

Yeah, that’s pretty Nigerian.

Anyway.

The airport is bad.

This article, “The New MMIA Terminal, A Symbol of Nigeria’s Problems,” is an amazingly well written article about the “new wing” Holly’s referring to here. I won’t quote the whole article, but I think the opening and closing are worth sharing:

“This story fits in a nutshell. Nigeria built a billion-dollar airport terminal that was too small for most of the aircraft it was intended to house, resulting in underutilization and a facility unfit for use and purpose….Nigeria will never become an economic power if we keep executing like quacks and amateurs. Neither can it be successful when corruption is approved as a national way of life.”

This is where my interview with Holly will end for today. Keep in mind, we didn’t get into one of the biggest issues at the airport which was called out by the author in the article referenced above: corruption.

I’ve been asked for money and “blessings” by immigration officials on multiple occasions. One time one of the workers even followed me into the security line to beg for a job at my husband’s company. One of the worst horror stories from camp is from a friend who had all of her jewelry stolen out of her bag. I’m leaving this all at broad strokes for today because you get the idea.

As much as I’m dreading journeying through the airport, and whatever shenanigans customs and immigration has prepared for us, I’m equally excited to get back to camp and see everyone. Especially CJ. An eyewitness recently messaged me that he’s concerned because CJ is surviving on cheerios exclusively.

I hope it goes without saying, we welcome your prayers as we journey back.

A big thank you to Holly, for sharing about the Lagos airport with us for this post.

P.S.

We had to buy all new flights to get back home as Air France refused to do anything to help after a scammer canceled our flights. If you want to read the whole story, I wrote it up here. It’s the first post I’ve ever made on reddit (I’m just desperate and sharing anywhere at this point), but with over 125,000 views, it’s gotten some good traction.

It’s all been pretty horrible, but we’re in good spirits. Also, I’ll be annoying Air France until they decide to help fix the situation. Cheers to the persistence that I’ve learned in Nigeria. It does come in handy, after all.