Air Peace says its reputation is at risk after the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority's August 2026 delay report, which the airline claims misstates its flight totals and inflates delay percentages. The carrier’s chief operating officer, Oluwatoyin Olajide, told reporters the NCAA figure omits more than 700 flown sectors and therefore skews performance metrics.
Air Peace says it operated 2,564 flights in August 2026, compared with 1,864 cited in the NCAA publication. The airline argues that excluding those flights produced an artificially high delay rate and questioned why the regulator published detailed August data only 13 days after the month ended, without releasing a comparable July monthly dataset following Q1 and Q2 disclosures on 31 July.
Olajide placed much of the blame for the month’s disruptions on factors outside the carrier’s control, including industry-wide industrial action, airport congestion, wildlife strikes, ground-handling damage, weather and limited airport infrastructure. She said union-instigated disruptions beginning on 11 August lingered for more than 14 days and forced rescheduling, avoidable delays and cancellations.
Air Peace’s internal review found that 391 flights, representing 15 percent of August’s delays, were caused by internal factors, principally technical unscheduled maintenance and fuel-related issues. "First and foremost, the NCAA report vastly under reported our total flight volume," Olajide said. The airline added that over 51 percent of the external delays it recorded were attributable to tarmac congestion and traffic.
The carrier singled out a bird strike on aircraft 5N-BYG at Abuja, which damaged the inlet cowl and required replacement at a stated cost of USD1.8M, removing the aircraft from service for more than a week. It also reported an aircraft taken out of operations for over 14 days after being damaged by a ground-handling company. The airline said these incidents materially reduced available capacity and disrupted scheduled rotations.
Air Peace urged the NCAA to review and audit its data collection methods so future reports accurately reflect airline operations and the causes of delays. The airline said it will continue to optimise internal processes but warned regulators and the public that many of August’s delays were systemic and beyond its control.
