The management of local airline Air Peace has described as “inaccurate” a flight delay report recently released by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
The Authority had in its August 2026 summary of domestic airline flight disruption operations said Air Peace recorded 1,330 delayed flights out of 1,864 flights operated during the month. The report, however, did not detail reasons for the delays.
In a firm response, the local airline, in a statement signed by its Chief Operating Officer,
Oluwatoyin Olajide, Air Peace claimed that the report contained fundamental data inaccuracies regarding its operational volume and mischaracterised the root causes of flight delays, unfairly placing the blame on the airline.
“The said data failed to reflect the reality of our operations, nor does it accurately contextualize the primary drivers of the operational disruptions experienced during the said month.
“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!”
The airline argued that the release of the report by the NCAA was too “early”, and omitted several industrial actions in the month under review.
“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.”
Contrary to the NCAA report, Air Peace noted that its own internal review of August 2026 flight data performance analysis revealed that 391 flights, which is only 15% of the delays experienced during August, were caused by internal factors. The rest of the delays experienced, the local airline argued, were caused by external factors, which can be proven through available data.
“From the above, only 391 flights should be attributed to Air Peace, which represents 15% of the delays in that month.”
The airline then listed internal factors for the delays as largely due to technical issues, including unscheduled maintenance on its aircraft and fuel-related issues.
It identified the major external disruptions as follows: airport congestion and traffic, bird strikes, unexpected breakdowns of airport facilities, inclement weather conditions, and unexpected picketing of the airline by aviation union members.
It listed other external factors that caused the delays to include aircraft damage by a ground handling company.
“Again, the narrative that Air Peace is primarily responsible for these delays is completely false. The majority of the delays experienced by our passengers were driven by external factors and completely outside of our control.
“In stark contrast, delays caused by internal operational factors accounted for just 15% of the total delays experienced during the month of August.
“We have restrained ourselves from making these facts public before now, but we have now been pushed beyond acceptable limits, hence the need to go public and state the facts the way they are.”
The statement added that Air Peace has heavily invested in its fleet, crew availability, continuous high-standard training and maintenance protocols.
“We remain fully committed to safety, on-time performance and passenger satisfaction; however, an airline cannot safely or logistically bypass severe airport congestion/traffic, inadequate airport infrastructure, sunset restrictions or adverse weather conditions.
“We will continue to optimize our internal processes to mitigate against all the internal delay drivers.”
It urged the NCAA to review and audit its data collection methods to ensure future reports accurately reflect the correct data and delay causal factors/operational environment of the Nigerian aviation sector.
