Air Peace NCAA delays row grows as the airline challenges the regulator’s August disruption figures and delay percentages

Air Peace has disputed a Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority report on August flight disruptions, saying the regulator undercounted its operations and wrongly assigned responsibility for delays.

Air Peace, NCAA, flight delays, Nigerian aviation, Oluwatoyin Olajide, featured

The airline’s position was set out on Thursday 17 September 2026 in a statement signed by chief operating officer Oluwatoyin Olajide. The NCAA report had identified Air Peace as the domestic carrier with the highest number of disruptions in August.

The NCAA recorded 1,864 Air Peace disruptions in a month when domestic airlines together logged 7,961 disruptions. United Nigeria Airlines followed with 1,231 disruptions and Enugu Air with 878. The regulator said weather and technical problems were among the wider causes of delay and cancellation.

Air Peace said it operated 2,564 flights in August, not the 1,864 listed by the NCAA. “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,” the airline said.

Air Peace also questioned why the monthly series began with August rather than July, after first-half figures were published on 31 July, and why granular August data appeared 13 days after the month ended while July monthly figures were still unpublished.

The airline said the report did not reflect an industrial dispute that affected its operations. It said union action that began on 11 August lasted more than 14 days and led to rescheduling, delays and cancellations.

Air Peace asked why the NCAA published figures without first setting out the causes of delays attributed to each airline.

An internal review, the airline said, found that 391 flights, or 15 per cent of its August delays, were caused by internal factors. Those included unscheduled maintenance and fuel-related problems. Air Peace said the rest were external.

It attributed more than 51 per cent of external delays to tarmac and traffic congestion. It also cited airport infrastructure failures, rainy-season weather holds and diversions, picketing by aviation union members, and damage to an aircraft by a ground-handling company that took that aircraft out of service for more than 14 days.

Air Peace said aircraft 5N-BYG was struck by a bird in Abuja, damaging the inlet cowl beyond acceptable limits at a repair cost of 1.8 million US dollars.

The aircraft, which it said flew at least eight sectors a day and carried about 1,000 passengers, was grounded for more than a week until the cowl was replaced.

“The majority of the delays experienced by our passengers were driven by external factors and completely outside of our control,” the airline said. It added that it still provided hotel accommodation after some external disruptions, which it described as beyond the industry standard.

Air Peace said it had held back from publishing the details until the NCAA report appeared. It asked the authority to audit its data collection so that future reports reflect correct totals and delay causes.

It said it would keep working on internal delay factors while arguing that an airline cannot bypass congestion, weak infrastructure, sunset restrictions or bad weather.

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The NCAA report remains the official published account of August disruptions. Air Peace has now issued a detailed rebuttal. The regulator had not, in the material surrounding Thursday’s airline statement, issued a point-by-point reply.