Trip Report: ASKY Airlines - Lome to Lagos (December 2017)

Trip Report: ASKY Airlines - Lome to Lagos

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I was travelling to Western African on Ethiopian Airlines.   Normally, to fly to West Africa you must first connect in East Africa which adds to your travel times.  Recently, Ethiopian has been investing in regional African airlines including Togo-based ASKY Airlines; this assists in making ASKY Airlines and Lomé their West African hub.  ASKY Airlines is an initiatives of West African governments to provide air service in the region.  Based in Lomé, the airline operates a combination of Boeing 737 and Dash Q-400 planes.

I connected to ASKY from Ethiopian in Lomé, as I flew from Newark to Lomé on Ethiopian and then from Lomé to Lagos on ASKY.  My flight was operated by a Boeing 737 with a scheduled flight time of 1 hour.   The Ethiopian flight was scheduled to land in Lomé at 12p and the ASKY flight was scheduled to depart at 1:15p.  This was a very tight connection, both for myself and my luggage. 

We landed in Lomé a bit behind schedule at 12:15p, and there were a lot of passengers

who were connecting to ASKY flights and had tight connections.  Even though everything was booked as one ticket, most passengers were not able to access their ASKY boarding passes until we got to Lomé.  As soon as we deplaned, we were met by ASKY representatives who had boarding passes already printed out.  They were also there to direct us to the transfer side where we would have to go through security and then proceed upstairs to our boarding gates.  Even though the airport is small and connections can be made easily, it was not a lot of time to the entire process was hectic and rushed, especially with flight delays.  Luckily, ASKY’s idea of ‘on-time departure’ is a bit flexible.

We were supposed to start boarding at 12:30p for the 1:15p departure, but boarding did not start until about 1pm.  There was no real process for boarding, the airline just announced it was boarding and people lined up to board the plane.  The plane is setup in a 3-3 seat layout in economy and a 2-2 seat layout in business.  There were approximately 12 business class seats and approximately 130-150 economy class seats.  While the plane’s exterior looked freshly painted, the inside was definitely an older plane.  The overhead bins were older, the signs above the seats looked dated and overall the cabin looked worn and dated.  I was seated in the aisle row right behind business class to the legroom was very good, although I could have sat anywhere.  Apparently many African airlines have an ‘open seating’ policy in which you just sit at any open seat, regardless of what your boarding pass says.  It was very interesting and caused some confusion and some passengers followed the ‘open seating’ policy while others followed what was stated on their boarding pass.  The seat itself was decently comfortable but it was definitely not a new seat.  The color scheme of the seats also added to the worn factor and made the plane look even older.

Even though the scheduled departure time was 1:15pm, the boarding doors did not close

until 2:00p.  We pushed back, manual safety demonstrations, in both English and French were conducted, and then we took off for our flight time of 30 minutes.  The flight was making several stops in West Africa so the flight path from was from Lomé to Lagos, to Douala, and then another city before heading back to Lomé.  Those whose final stop was Lagos disembarked in Lagos and those who were continuing on remained on board.  Given the short flight time, there was no in-flight service.  Our scheduled arrival was for 3pm, and given it was only a 30 minute flight we landed generally on time. 

Overall, it was an interesting flight experience with ASKY.  Given their partnership with Ethiopian, their ground staff were very good in greeting the aircraft with printed boarding passes, printed bag tags, and directing passengers where to go.  The on-board staff were not as friendly but provided a basic service.  The older look and feel of the plane made it a negative, but in the end it did not make that much of a difference given the short flight time.  As a side note - in the end, I made the connection but my luggage did not, as with several other passengers who made the connection with me.  There was very little follow-up or numbers to call, and we were just told that the luggage would come on the next day's flight so check back then; luckily that is what happened.  ASKY is trying to build itself as a West African hub and are promoting themselves and connections to Lomé with lower fares to get across West Africa.  I would choose to fly them again if the flight time was short and the fares were low, but they would not be my first choice in air travel.