Air Peace only African airline to acquire brand new aircraft in Nigeria in 10 years
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Air Peace, Mrs. Toyin Olajide has reiterated that the airline remains the only indigenous carrier to have acquired brand new airplanes in the country in the past a decade. The restatement is coming on the heels of claim by some players in the sector that Ibom Air was the first to take possession of brand new aircraft in the country with the recent acquisition of an Airbus A220-300 aircraft.
This is as industry stakeholders have called on the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to discourage false and deceptive claims by some operators in the industry. Olajide said that the aviation industry in Nigeria and globally was aware that in the past 10 years, it is only Air Peace that has acquired brand new aircraft in the country.
Olajide said that it is public knowledge that Air Peace made firm order for 13 Embraer E195-E2 aircraft and the new aircraft, which Embraer showed the world when it was in the production line has started arriving. “The first one arrived in January 28, the second came on March 18 and the third one is coming in on June 17, 2021. They are flown directly from the manufacturing facility in San Jose, Brazil.
“The 13 aircraft we ordered will be brought into the country by the manufacturer, Embraer. I don’t understand the tendency to deceive the public by claiming an aircraft that was leased from another airline is brand new,” she said.
Also, Amos Akpan, the Managing Director, Flight and Logistics Solutions, condemned such false claims and described it as misinformation. He emphasised that brand new aircraft usually come straight from the manufacturing line, noting that the only brand new aircraft delivered in recent times were the Embraer E195-E2 delivered by Embraer to Air Peace.
“People saw when the aircraft was being manufactured in the manufacturing line. In any case, if you take the manufactured serial number (MSN) of the aircraft claimed to be delivered brand new, you will see when it was manufactured, the first airline that received the aircraft and so on,” Akpan said.
Besides, Capt. Ado Sanusi, the former Chief Executive Officer of Aero Contractors, insisted that such claim was wrong, saying it sends bad signals to the industry.
