Air Peace has challenged the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority’s (NCAA) August 2026 flight disruption figures, saying the regulator’s data omitted more than 700 flights operated by the airline and failed to distinguish carrier-induced delays from disruptions caused by external factors.
Oluwatoyin Olajide, chief operating officer of Air Peace, said the airline operated 2,564 flights in August, compared with the 1,864 operations recorded for the carrier in the NCAA’s monthly report.
The NCAA’s figures showed that Air Peace had 1,330 delayed flights out of 1,864 operations, putting its reported delay rate at 71.4 percent and giving it the highest number of delayed flights among airlines covered by the report.
Air Peace, however, said the gap of about 700 flights significantly distorted the reported delay rate.
The airline said a review of its August operations showed that 391 delays were attributable to internal factors, accounting for about 15 percent of its total delays during the month.
It said the internally generated disruptions were mainly linked to technical issues that required unscheduled maintenance and fuel-related challenges.
The carrier attributed most of the remaining disruptions to circumstances outside its direct control, including airport congestion, infrastructure constraints, adverse weather, bird strikes, industrial action and aircraft damage during ground handling.
Air Peace said airport congestion and traffic accounted for more than 51 percent of its externally caused delays, with aircraft at times held on the ground or placed in holding patterns because of airport capacity limitations.
The airline said the operational constraints demonstrated the need for flight-delay statistics to take into account the wider aviation ecosystem within which airlines operate.
It also pointed to a bird-strike incident involving its aircraft 5N-BYG in Abuja, which it said damaged the aircraft’s inlet cowl.
According to the carrier, repairing the aircraft cost approximately $1.8 million, while the aircraft remained out of service for more than a week.
Industrial action by aviation unions was another major disruption cited by the airline.
Air Peace said union activity in August disrupted its operations for more than 14 days, with the consequences extending beyond the initial picketing.
It said changes to flight schedules and the resulting backlog continued to affect operations after the industrial action itself.
The carrier said the NCAA’s reporting methodology should provide greater clarity on the causes of flight disruptions rather than attributing delays to individual airlines.
According to Air Peace, separating delays caused by airlines from those arising from airport congestion, weather, infrastructure, industrial action and other external events would provide a more accurate assessment of operational performance.
“The NCAA report should have provided a breakdown of the causes of delays rather than attributing all disruptions to individual airlines,” the airline said.
The carrier has asked the NCAA to review its data collection and reporting process to ensure that future reports accurately capture the number of flights operated by each airline and identify the factors responsible for delays.
