Air Peace has rejected a flight disruption report released by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), describing the figures as inaccurate and arguing that the report failed to properly account for the circumstances behind delays recorded in August 2026.
In its August summary of domestic airline flight disruptions, the NCAA reported that Air Peace had 1,330 delayed flights out of 1,864 flights operated during the month. The report did not provide details on the specific causes of the delays.
Air Peace, however, disputed the figures and said the data used by the aviation regulator did not accurately represent its operations during the period.
In a statement signed by its Chief Operating Officer, the airline argued that the report contained significant errors in its calculation of the airline’s operational volume and also failed to distinguish between delays caused by the airline and those resulting from external circumstances.
“The said data failed to reflect the reality of our operations, nor does it accurately contextualize the primary drivers of the operational disruptions experienced during the said month.
“First and foremost, the NCAA report vastly underreported our total flight volume. Air Peace operated a total of 2,564 flights in August 2026, as opposed to the 1,864 flights stated in the NCAA report. By omitting over 700 fully operational flights from the data pool, the NCAA’s calculations skew our actual performance metrics and artificially inflate the reported delay percentages. Most worrisome is: Why did the NCAA start the monthly series with August rather than July, immediately following the publication of Q1 and Q2 on 31st of July?
“It is indeed worrisome that there is still no equivalent monthly data located for July, yet the NCAA published unusually granular August airline delay data only 13 days after month-end. Unbelievable!”
The airline also questioned the timing of the NCAA publication, arguing that the report was released too quickly and did not adequately capture disruptions caused by industrial action within the aviation sector during the month.
“It is reasonable to suggest that the early release of the August publication should have been accompanied by disclosure that the month contained an extraordinary aviation-sector industrial disruption which significantly affected the airline’s operations.
“The effect of the August 11th instigated Union disruptions of our operations lingered for over 14 days, leading to rescheduling, avoidable delays and cancellation of flights.
“Why was this report published rapidly without identifying the causes of the delays attributed to individual airlines instead of publishing wrong figures that could tarnish the reputation of the airline despite prevailing operational challenges?
“Furthermore, the characterization of these delays failed to differentiate between internal operational issues and severe systemic challenges that are completely outside the airline’s control.”
According to the airline’s internal assessment of its August operations, only 391 flights, representing 15 percent of the delays recorded during the month, were linked to internal factors.
“From the above, only 391 flights should be attributed to Air Peace, which represents 15% of the delays in that month.”
The airline said its internal causes were largely connected to technical matters, including unscheduled aircraft maintenance and fuel-related issues.
It said most of the remaining disruptions were caused by factors outside its direct control. These included airport congestion and traffic, bird strikes, unexpected failures of airport facilities, bad weather and the disruption caused by aviation union members picketing the airline.
Air Peace also identified damage to an aircraft by a ground-handling company among the external factors that contributed to delays.
“Again, the narrative that Air Peace is primarily responsible for these delays is completely false. The majority of the delays experienced by our passengers were driven by external factors and completely outside of our control.
“In stark contrast, delays caused by internal operational factors accounted for just 15% of the total delays experienced during the month of August.
“We have restrained ourselves from making these facts public before now, but we have now been pushed beyond acceptable limits, hence the need to go public and state the facts the way they are.”
The airline said it had continued to invest in its aircraft fleet, crew availability, staff training and maintenance systems as part of efforts to improve its operations.
“We remain fully committed to safety, on-time performance and passenger satisfaction; however, an airline cannot safely or logistically bypass severe airport congestion/traffic, inadequate airport infrastructure, sunset restrictions or adverse weather conditions.
“We will continue to optimize our internal processes to mitigate against all the internal delay drivers.”
Air Peace called on the NCAA to review its methods of collecting and analysing flight-delay data, saying future reports should accurately capture both the number of flights operated and the factors responsible for disruptions within Nigeria’s aviation sector.
Source: Air Peace
