June 22, (THEWILL) – Chief Allen Onyema, Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace Limited, speaks with ANTHONY AWUNOR, about the airline, its operations and sundry issues. Excerpts:
Abuja-Heathrow Flight Operations
On the international scene, daily flights from Lagos to London are ongoing. From October, we will start Abuja to London flights as the British authority has granted Air Peace access to Heathrow Airport directly.
We appreciate President Bola Tinubu and the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo for their support. If our safety record is dented, there will be problems. We have represented Nigeria so well. With this, we shall be running seven days a week, that is, four days to Heathrow and three days to Gatwick Airport from Abuja. If you are not good, foreign airlines won’t allow you to fly there commercially.
Why We Must Continue To Be Patriotic
We called you here today to let you know that we will continue to do that and nothing will stop us from doing those things that will promote the wellbeing of every Nigerian. Government cannot do it alone. Nowhere in the world has government done everything for its citizens. Patriotism demands that every citizen must play its own role. Air Peace has been playing its patriotic role for this country. And don’t forget that in the not so distant past, Nigerians were paying through their noses to undertake international travels. This airline came in and till date, we made flying to UK affordable to Nigerians. Without Air Peace, that wouldn’t have happened.
Today, we are happy Nigerians could fly other airlines. You don’t need to fly Air Peace but we want you to fly other foreign airlines at the right price. Whatever you pay to a foreign country depletes our reserves. So when you overpay, it hurts the nation. We should begin to fight for our own.
Where We Are
Overtime, it was as if if we are seeing Air Peace, we are seeing delays, cancellations and all that. But let the truth be said, no airline cancels or delays flights for the fun of it because you are losing money. You know better than I do that, no airline will gain from cancelling or delaying flights. You are losing instantly. A lot of videos out there are fake and they were deliberately shot just to hurt us. Even recently, they started recycling old videos against Air Peace.
Take a look at the ICAO list of things that cause flight delays. About 94 per cent or 95 per cent of delays are not caused by airlines. Weather, infrastructural progress, bird strikes, inadequate landing equipment, sunset airport, congestion at the airport, unruly passenger behaviour are some of the causes. All these things cause delays and cancellation of scheduled flights. Unruly passenger behaviour is an obstacle to the development of the aviation industry in this country. Unimaginable things that, they will not do in Cotonou, they do it here. So these are external factors.
Indigenous Businesses
Don’t equate indigenous businesses with the ownership of those businesses. Don’t look at the fact that this business is owned by an Igbo man, Hausa man or Yoruba man. That is the thinking of people who are very myopic. If you destroy any business that is providing massive jobs opportunities for the people, you don’t know where the next suicide bomber or armed robber will come from. And you don’t know who will be the next victim. It could be your siblings or parents. Nigerians should begin to do things that will promote the image of indigenous investments. Anything other than that is an aberration.
Whether you like him, hate him, this country should be grateful to Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu, Tony Elumelu, Mike Adenuga and Allen Onyema. I say it without any regrets. If you hate Dangote and you try to destroy him, you are destroying your country. Take his business down, billions of Nigerians will suffer. What Dangote has contributed to the nation is unimaginable. Look at the billions of lives he is touching and employing. Look at what he has set up. If Nigeria is going to import all those things Nigeria will collapse. Nigeria should begin to jettison this Pull Him Down syndrome. It has become a culture, this tendency for some people to destroy things they are supposed to protect.
Nobody is God Almighty. When you hate someone, it is is like taking poison. At Air Peace, we don’t care where you come from. That is why Air Peace is like a mini Nigeria. We have over 4,000 staff of Air Peace, irrespective of their tribes.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
That is one thing I like President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He is detribalised. You may not know. He is a detribalised president. He has an open ear and he listens to everyone. This country cannot be good if you don’t have a detribalised mind. We should make use of our diversity. This is important. What I am saying today has no bearing with anything of present. It is something I have been saying overtime. We must support our own.
Like I said, if you bring Dangote down today, you are bringing down the country. Dangote businesses are no longer about Dangote. It is about your well-being and my well-being. It is about our country. We must, as Nigerians, be deliberate in promoting the wellbeing of Nigerian businesses because they provide jobs. Government cannot provide all the jobs and every nation is run by the private sector while government provides the enabling environment.
Festus Keyamo
I must also commend the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo. Like or hate him. However, we at the Airline Operators of Nigeria know what we are enjoying now. We have a minister that has a listening ear and that has trickled down to all the agencies.
If you call the FAAN MD, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku now and complain about anything, it is done immediately. The one she cannot do, she will sit you down and give you timelines. I thank President Tinubu for appointing someone like Festus Keyamo that has brought a lot of revolution in the industry. But for President Bola Tinubu, the aviation industry would have been dead by now. The beginning of good governance starts with the kind of people you bring to the saddle to run the ministries and agencies.
Do you know that Nigeria is now about to start receiving their first dry lease opportunities. It will happen in the next three weeks. What has not happened in a decade because Nigeria was unofficially blacklisted 10 years ago. We are talking about issues of capacity, what the past administration did. In the next three weeks, announcement will be made and dry leased planes will start coming. All the big airlines you see, they don’t have up to 20 planes bought with their money, yet we fly them.
Everything is originally finance leased. In Nigeria we have airlines with over 35 newly purchased planes, 20 and some 10, some 5, and you still call them names. You don’t even know the conditions under which they operate. Now this government is making it easy for aviation to thrive. They need our support. Once again, I must commend Keyamo for running round the aviation world and getting them. To the extent of the fact that the language of Capetown has changed in favour of this country. It is the first time a home grown airline is being treated that, this is our airline.
I am proud of Mrs Kuku. Our first flight from London to Nigeria, the wahala was so much. They young lady insisted that this airline is our own and gave us support. Kuku deserves applause.
Flight Delays, Cancellation Mitigation Plan
Since May 10, 2025, when we introduced the buffer system where aircraft are set aside to serve as a standby to support in situations of flight delays and cancellations, we have noticed that our operations improved as regards on-time performance.
Currently, we are recording 85 percent one-time departures daily. Last week, we recorded two bird strikes. In the past five years, Air Peace has recorded 115 bird strikes and over 30 bird strikes this year alone. There was a year we had 43 bird strikes. But passengers do not understand that the flight delays and cancellations are not the fault of the airline. When bird strikes occur, it automatically takes out our equipment from operations.
Remember, it was a bird strike that took out an airplane in America; the pilot had to dive into the river. Bird strikes can explode your engine, depending on how it happens. We should be thankful to God Almighty bird strike hasn’t caused an accident in Nigeria. We are even having animals attacking our aircraft. Because of our capacity and the number of places we operate flights to, you see many people on social media shouting and blaming Air Peace. Sometimes we encounter thunderstorms and rain, and we are not able to operate flights. This will definitely affect other flights on our schedule. Air Peace has zero tolerance for unsafe practices. What we sell to Nigerians is our safety protocols, and we are very proud of this. We’ve not been validated alone by Nigerians. Air Peace has also been validated to be the pride of this nation by one of the most stringent Civil Aviation Authorities all over the world.
International Flights
Today, Air Peace is still operating flights to London. The British and European authorities came here and audited our airline. We passed in flying colours. That is why they invited us to come. And over the last one and a half years, Air Peace has proved its ability on international routes.To the admiration of those who gave us that validation, we never cancelled any flight to the UK for one day. The only times we delayed were the times the airport itself called on us, telling us to delay our departures from here because they were doing runway repairs. We stopped going to Dubai because of the visa ban, but the traffic is not like it used to be. So we are studying the route and gathering data on how the traffic is doing. We are, however, in partnership with Emirates now.
As for South Africa, the visa regime in South Africa is frustrating, even our pilots are being denied a Visa to South Africa. Also, we stopped the Dubai route because of the Visa ban, but now it has been lifted and we know there is no traffic currently, but we will continue to monitor the situation. We are going to do a direct flight to the Caribbean nations, starting with Antigua. A few days ago we flew to St. Kitts and Nevis. I’m sure some of you have seen the stories. We came back on June 12th. We flew to St. Kitts and Nevis. We came back the same day. And yesterday we went to St. Kitts and Nevis again and came back this morning. This is a 20-hour flight, 10 hours going, 10 hours coming. We landed in St. Kitts and Nevis, we tried our cargo, our passengers.
Covid-19 Era
My greatest moment as the CEO of Air Peace was when we deployed all our aircraft to the service of this country, free of charge, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most nations in West Africa wished they were Nigerians. We went to Turkey and brought medical supplies for over 220 million Nigerians free or charge. We deployed to India 20 times. In the wake of that bringing Nigerians to their country. We deserve to be applauded by our nation by everybody including government agencies. We deserve it. Anything other than that, should be questioned.
Xylophobia In South Africa
Of course, not forgetting that this airline brought pride to every Nigerian when Nigerians were being killed in South Africa.. We stopped xenophobic attacks in South Africa. It was the action that Air Peace took that stopped xenophobic attacks in South Africa. We deployed our jumbo jets, entered South Africa and brought Nigerians back to their own land, free of charge. They comprised Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Nupe, Gwari all of them. Nigerians were walking tall worldwide during those periods.
Sudan
At the same time, we also deployed our aircraft during the war in Sudan because we didn’t want any Nigerian to die in Sudan. We didn’t wait for a twinkle of a minute to come because we know the request. We deployed free of charge to bring back Nigerians. So if it were in other climes, this airline should have been celebrated by everybody.
Air Peace is the airline for this country. So we have done a lot for our fatherland and we will continue to do it because we see it as a calling and not to make money. This interventions on behalf of Nigerians have caused Air Peace several billions. I don’t know how much that would be, to recover that. If anyone doubts it, ask government, when they did on their own, how much they paid, even from Libya that is about 3 hours away. Not to talk about deploying your jets 14 hours going and 14 hours coming from China three times, 13 hours to India and 13 hours back into India 12 times.
Air Peace has spent several billions rescuing this country, rescuing the government of Nigeria, rescuing Nigerians free of charge. We demand to be applauded and appreciated by our country men. Anything other than this should be questioned.
Anthony Awunor, is a business correspondent who holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Linguistics (UNILAG). He is also an alumnus of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria Kaduna State. He lives in Lagos.
