Unanswered questions as Nigerian woman dies inside plane while visiting daughter in Canada

It was a bright Friday morning in Lagos, and Mrs Vero Ajieh was in high spirits. Her voice was sharp and cheerful, her face glowed with joy and anticipation.

Friday, May 30, 2025, was no ordinary day for her. She was counting down to 10:20 pm, when she would board a flight out of Lagos, Nigeria, to Calgary, Canada, to visit her daughter.

By mid-morning, her son, Kelvin Ajieh, with whom she was staying in Lagos, had carefully packed her luggage ahead of her scheduled departure. As the day stretched on, Kelvin drove his mother from his home in Ajah to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, MMIA, Lagos, arriving with time to spare before departure.

At the terminal, departure formalities were completed without incident. When the moment came, Kelvin waved his mother goodbye and watched as she was wheeled into the KLM flight, unaware that the brief wave was their final farewell.

Flight booking

Later recounting the events, Kelvin spoke with sadness and explained that special arrangements had been made well ahead of the trip to ensure his mother’s comfort and safety.

He said: “When we booked the flight, we requested assistance because of her age and because she was impaired in terms of mobility. She was overweight. As is our custom, a couple of weeks before the flight, she had her annual health check-up at a reputable hospital and was given a clean bill of health. She travelled with those medical reports in her luggage.”

To make the journey as seamless as possible, Kelvin told Vanguard that a KLM lounge had been booked for her in Amsterdam, where she was to transit.

Kelvin said: “The plan was that she would be wheeled into the plane. Also, if she needed assistance in-flight, she would be assisted. That was the impression we were given by the airline. Also, when they got to Amsterdam, a wheelchair would be waiting for her to take her from the airport to the lounge.

“When it was time to board again to Calgary, the wheelchair would take her from the lounge to the airport. That was the arrangement we had with KLM. When we got to the international airport in Lagos, I invited one of the KLM staff. They did an assessment of her and said she could fly. They wheeled her into the plane and I bid her farewell.”

Familiar call

After Kelvin returned home from the airport, he waited for the familiar call from Amsterdam. His mum had made the journey before, and the stopover usually came with a brief reassurance that all was well. But as the night wore on and the expected update failed to come, uneasiness started to creep in.

He told Vanguard: “She had done this journey before. Normally, when she got to Amsterdam, she called us. This time, we were not getting the call. For some strange reason, my son, very attached to my mum, kept pestering me. He kept saying he wanted to speak to grandma.

“So, I called my sister in Canada and asked if she had heard from mum, and she said, no. So, we started calling her. The phone rang, but nobody took the call. I said to not panic. Time to board the flight (Amsterdam to Calgary) came, we assumed she boarded the flight. Believing that she was on board the flight, my sister went to the airport to pick her up a couple of minutes before the flight was scheduled to land. But 30 minutes after the flight’s arrival, she called me saying she had not seen mum.”

Disturbed

Kelvin told Vanguard that as events unfolded, he and his siblings became increasingly disturbed, initially assuming she might have been stopped for questioning over some of the items she carried.

He said: “We thought maybe Customs and Immigration had stopped her for questioning because of the things she carried. My sister decided to approach Customs and Immigration at the Calgary airport to inquire if my mum was there. As their policy stipulates, they said they could not tell us if they were questioning anyone. However, they told us to call the person and she would be allowed to take the call. Therefore, my sister called her, but she did not take the call.

“I started getting a negative vibe about it. So, I said it was time to call KLM. When we called, I was surprised by the response I got that KLM in Amsterdam does not work on weekends and could not take calls. We waited for two hours and started panicking. So, my sister had to call KLM again. When she did that, the customer care representative she spoke to was extremely dismissive and insensitive. We asked whether we could confirm the location of our mum because she should have arrived in Canada. Her response was: ‘Sorry, we cannot confirm the location of your mum’. We waited an hour before calling again, and it was even more dismissive.

“The response we got made my brother in Ontario to try KLM in Ontario to see if they would be more cooperative. To our greatest surprise, they said they could not share any information on the passenger.”

Breakthrough

Almost breaking down in tears, he told Vanguard that the situation felt strange, leading his sister to return to Calgary airport authorities in distress.

He said: “One of the Customs and Immigration personnel took pity on her and asked for my mum’s details. A couple of hours later, my sister went back to Customs and Immigration and they broke the news to her that: ‘Sorry, your mum never got on this flight from Amsterdam.’ They, however, advised that all our queries be directed to KLM.

“Out of desperation and having tried KLM without any positive feedback, I called the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. That was when our breakthrough started. I spoke to a lovely lady whom I sent her my mum’s picture and other details.

“After those things were done, she told me to give her one, two hours to speak to the KLM representatives in the airport to find out the whereabouts of this passenger. I assumed at that point she knew what had happened, but she wanted to be diplomatic about it.

“At the same time, my sister from Calgary called the Dutch police out of desperation and said: ‘Our mum is missing, can you help?’ They asked for the details and she shared with them. The Dutch police said they would get back to her. After about an hour, the Dutch police called my sister, saying they also received my phone number from the Schiphol airport authority.

Official notification

“The Schiphol airport authority requested that they pass the information to me because they were not in a good position to bring that kind of news to us. The first official notification about the demise of our mum came from the Dutch police. That was almost 23 hours after she died and almost 10 hours after she was due to land in Calgary.

“The first report given to us verbally was that when the plane was over Spain, Barcelona, to be precise, she had a cardiac arrest and she got up to use the restroom before she fell. We were amazed to hear this. After crying, my siblings and I spoke to one another and could not understand why our mum would die and we would not be notified.

“In her flight details, there was a next of kin’s name. There was an email address, but we could not understand why KLM did not deem it fit to reach out to that next of kin.

“We informed the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, and the Director of Consumer Protection and Public Affairs, Michael Achimugu, came to Lagos. It was initially fire and brimstone, but everything later fizzled out.

“It took me about three months to get a report from the NCAA. Also, despite the NCAA telling the airline to bring back our mum’s corpse, we repatriated our mum’s remains by ourselves. Till this very moment, close to approaching 10 months, we still have not received a formal call or notification from KLM to acknowledge what happened.

Report and discrepancy

While adding that the family received conflicting accounts of where the incident occurred, with reports alternately placing the aircraft over Barcelona, Marseille and Algeria, he said: “We got the report. The report states that the plane was over Marseille in France, contradictory to the first information we got. Remember that the Dutch police informed us that when the plane landed, they boarded the plane, and they interacted and interviewed the pilots and the crew members that interacted with my mother.

“The information they gave to us is that the plane was over Barcelona, Spain. Now, the report that we got via NCAA states that KLM said the plane was over Marseille and they decided against landing the plane in Marseille, because they felt it did not have the medical structure to handle that kind of emergency. So, they decided to proceed on the journey. Unfortunately, my mum passed an hour later and there was no need to land the plane. That was the second report we got that contradicted the first. We eventually received a third report through our lawyer. The report stated that the plane was over Algeria.

“Currently, we have limited options because our system failed us. Also, I want to use this opportunity to solicit information from people who might have been on that flight, because it is clear I might not get the truth from KLM. I’ve got three different official reports on this case, two from KLM, one from the Dutch police. I don’t know which to believe. I’m relying on the media to reach people who were on board that flight to get information on what happened.”

KLM, NCAA respond

Efforts to get a response from KLM were unsuccessful. The airline’s station manager, Mr Damilola Ogunseye, told Vanguard that since the NCAA had stepped in, all inquiries would be directed to the regulator.

Reacting, the Director of Consumer Protection and Public Affairs at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Mr Michael Achimugu, said some of the details provided by Kelvin were inaccurate.

He said KLM was willing to repatriate Mrs Ajieh’s remains, but the family opted to use their insurance cover. (Vanguard)