LAGOS, Nigeria – The management of Air Peace Limited has rejected the flight disruption and performance report published by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for August 2026, alleging severe statistical omissions, mischaracterization of operational disruptions, and regulatory bias, aviation correspondents confirmed in Lagos on Thursday, September 17, 2026.
The airline stated that the regulatory findings failed to mirror operational realities on the ground, pointing out that the apex civil aviation regulator undercounted the carrier’s flight schedules by over 700 operational sectors, artificially distorting its operational reliability index.
Okay News reports that in an official rejoinder issued on Thursday, Air Peace clarified that it operated 2,564 completed flights throughout August 2026, as opposed to the 1,864 movements published by the NCAA, asserting that eliminating more than 700 flights from the analytical data set skewed performance benchmarks and inflated the airline’s delay ratio.
The carrier also questioned the timing and selectivity of the publication, expressing concern over why the authority released granular delay metrics for August barely 13 days after month-end while omitting performance records for July, following the release of the consolidated first and second-quarter performance audit on July 31, 2026.
Air Peace maintained that any objective performance review should have acknowledged that the operating environment in August was disrupted by an aggressive industrial union action on August 11, which paralyzed flight operations and triggered operational rescheduling, delays, and flight cancellations across domestic routes for more than 14 days.
Presenting its internal operational log for the period under review, the airline revealed that only 391 flights—representing roughly 15% of the delays recorded across its network in August—were caused by internal carrier logistics, primarily unscheduled aircraft maintenance and aviation fuel supply constraints.
The management emphasized that the remaining 85% of flight disruptions were driven by external operational bottlenecks outside the airline’s direct control, led by chronic airport tarmac congestion and air traffic control hold-ups, which accounted for more than 51% of external delays.
The carrier also cited recurring bird strike hazards as a major operational disrupter, disclosing that an aircraft with registration mark 5N-BYG suffered severe engine inlet cowl damage after colliding with a bird during operations in Abuja, requiring an emergency expenditure of $1.8 million to procure replacement parts.
The airline explained that the grounded aircraft typically services at least eight flight sectors daily, airlifting roughly 1,000 travelers, and its enforced withdrawal from flight rotations for over a week caused knock-on schedule disruptions across multiple domestic routes.
Air Peace added that infrastructural breakdowns across federally managed airports, including terminal facility failures and baggage handling delays, continue to undermine departure timelines, urging aviation regulatory agencies to adopt collaborative data verification methods that account for systemic infrastructural deficits rather than publishing unverified statistics that damage airline brands.
