By Louis Iba

Air Peace Limited said it has acquired two new Boeing 737-500 aircraft as part of efforts to boost its fleet in readiness for its foray into the African market.

The Chairman/CEO of the company, Chief Allen Onyeama, who spoke in an interview with journalists said the airline had just been licenced to fly outside Nigeria and that it had become necessary to make investments in the purchase of new aircraft for the new routes.

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“We have been designed to fly into these regional routes: Dakar, Senegal; Accra, Ghana, Niamey, Niger; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and Douala, Cameroon.

“One of the new aircraft has the capacity to take 142 passengers, while the other can take 126 passengers. In our fleet, we have nine Boeing and one Dornier aircraft, which makes us the second largest airline in Nigeria in terms of the number of aircraft. Some of the aircraft we will deploy for the regional routes.

“We have visited the civil aviation and relevant authorities in these countries and plans are at advanced state. we will soon announce our commencement dates on these routes but one thing that we want to assure our passengers is that we will put in our cockpit the best of pilots,” Onyema added.

He also said the airline had been designated to fly into China, Dubai, India, and South Africa. He said his company was ready to make the requisite investments to grow in the industry and create more jobs for Nigerians. He said at present, and in just two years, the airline had employed over 700 Nigerians. He however lamented the harsh operating environment in Nigeria saying airlines were finding it so difficult to survive as going businesses. Onyeama said most investors in the domestic airline business were stunned when recently the National Assembly had to wade in to resolve the recent challenges of scarcity of fuel and forex forcing some foreign airlines to cease doing business in Nigeria, while failing over the years to respond to the numerous challenges stifling local airlines. “The domestic airline industry is not getting the right support it deserves from the government as they would rather do everything possible to support foreign airlines,” lamented Onyema. “We do more for the country than the foreign airlines. If the foreign airlines face the kind of challenges that we face for 72 hours, they will all pack out of Nigeria. The government must rise up and protect local airlines,” he added. The Air Peace boss listed the challenges facing local airlines to include forex and fuel scarcity, high premium on insurance, double taxation to regulatory and airport agencies, as well as the failure of Nigerian Customs Services (NCS) to comply to recent government directives that exempted important aircraft spares from VAT. Onyeama said his airline lost over 260 Million recently when Customs refused to release imported engine spares to the airline, thus forcing the grounding of that particular aircraft for weeks. He also criticized some local airlines charging airfares as low as N12,500 on some routes. He said such fares were unrealistic and that airlines who charged such fares in an attempt to woo passengers and stay in the game, did so not minding that such undue or unfair competitive scheme could force them into breaching the safety of the aircraft, the crew and the lives of passengers. He also lamented ‎the inability of local airlines to source for credits both locally and internationally.