- Safiu Kehinde
Nigerian local airline, Air Peace, has faulted the flight disruption report published by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for August 2026.
Air Peace accused the NCAA of data inaccuracies regarding its operational volume, adding that the authority mischaracterized the root causes of flight delays unfairly with blames solely placed on the airline.
As contained in a statement issued on Thursday by its Chief Operating Officer, Oluwatoyin Olajide, the airline held that its total flight volume was underreported by NCAA, stress that it embarked on a total 2,564 flights as against the 1,864 recorded by the authority.
Olajide questioned the NCAA omission of the July’s record from the report.
‘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!’ She wrote.
The Air Peace Chief Operating Officer further challenged NCAA over failure to acknowledge the industrial action by aviation workers union which disrupted the airline’s flight operation.
She also questioned the authority’s failure to differentiate between delays caused by internal operational issues within the airline and those caused by external factors beyond Air Peace’s immediate control.
‘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.’ Olajide said.
The Air Peace official provided breakdown of the internal issues which caused the flight delay experienced by the air line.
These, according to Olajide, only represents 15 percent of the 391 flight delays record by the airline in August.
‘An internal review of our August 2026 flight data performance analysis reveals that 391 flights, which is only 15% of the delays experienced during the month of August, were caused by internal factors.
‘The rest of the delays experienced by Air Peace were caused by external factors, and we have the data to support this.
‘From the above, only 391 flights should be attributed to Air Peace, which represents 15% of the delays in that month.
‘The internal delay causal factors were largely as a result of technical issues resulting in unscheduled maintenance on our aircraft and fuel-related issues.’ She said.
The major external disruptions, as highlighted in the statement include: