…30 So Far This Year
…Says 98% Of Delays, Cancellations Caused By External Factors, 2% Internal
The Chairman of Air Peace’ Limited, Dr. Alex Onyema has disclosed that the airline experienced a total of 165 bird strikes in the last five years, which disrupted its operations and damaged .the carrier’s aircraft.
This is just as he also revealed that the airline has so far recorded a total of 30 bird strikes this year and that just last week the airline recorded two bird strikes in Owerri and Port-Harcourt.
He made this at an interactive session with aviation journalists at the airline’s corporate headquarters in Lagos today.
Speaking further , Onyema stated that bird strikes on Air Peace is one of the reasons why there are delays and cancellation of flights, which often creates friction between the affected passengers and the airline.
He refuted the allegation that domestic airlines delay and cancel flights for fun , adding that no airline delay or cancel flights for the fun of it as any airline who does that will lose huge amount of money.
“We delay flights when it is necessary to delay and we cancel flights when it is necessary to cancel flights,” he said
“Air Peace has zero tolerance for unsafe practices. We have the most stringent civil aviation in the world. This is why Israel gave Air Peace the approval to fly to Tel-Aviv,” he added.
He informed that delays and flight cancellations are caused by factors such as bird strike, weather, lack of infrastructure, unruly passengers, damaged to aircraft by ground handling companies, airport congestion among others.
Explaining further, Onyema said that if for instance Air Peace morning flight is cancelled due to incident of bird strike, it will affect other flights that follows the disrupted flight., adding that most delays are affected by safety concerns..
Onyema said that when a flight is cancelled because of weather, the affected passengers instead of waiting for the airline to schedule another flight for them, the passengers become unruly, demanding that the airline should put them on the next flight , a situation, the Chairman said will further compound the situation and consequently affects other flights.
He said that if that happens, it will take two to three days to airlift the back of affected passengers.
Some of the unruly behavior displayed by passengers in Nigeria, the Air Peace Chairman said will not be tolerated by airlines and civil authorities abroad, adding that Nigerian passengers cannot try a bit of what they do to local airlines in the country with international airlines abroad.
The Air Peace boss said that about 2 per cent of the delays are caused by internal factors while the remaining 98 per cent is caused by external factors.
Meanwhile, to address the challenge of delays and cancellations of flights, the Chairman, said that Air Peace on May 10, 2025 decided to restrategise its operations .
He noted that by May 12,2025, the rejig yeilded positive result as the airline posted on time performance of 85 per cent.
The airline, he noted has decided to use three aircraft as buffers to take care of passengers in the event of delays and cancellations caused by bird strikes and other factors.
According to him, “Air Peace can assure you of customer service that will be satisfactory to passengers. We are expecting more aircraft and our ontime performance will further increase.”
Speaking further on delays and cancellations of flights, Onyema said, ” If we don’t run aviation they way it should be run, delays and cancellations will continue to occur.”
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