Despite inconsistent government policies coupled with bureaucratic bottlenecks hindering the smooth operations of indigenous airlines, West Africa’s largest carrier, Air Peace, recently recorded another breakthrough.
This time it is not the expansion of its fleets as has been the case, rather the private carrier made a remarkable entry into the European air space after securing Foreign Carrier Operator Permit, FCOP, to fly to London.
This permit allows airlines from other regions to fly to Europe and Third Country Operator Permit (TCO-UK) that enables airlines to operate to UK.
The airline, founded in 2013 will now operate direct flights with its luxury wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft to these destinations.
While commenting on the milestone, Air Peace Chairman, Allen Onyema, stated that the airline has secured Foreign Carrier Operator Permit, FCOP, which allows airlines from other regions to fly to Europe and Third Country Operator Permit (TCO-UK) that enables airlines to operate to UK.
He said: “We obtained these permits that qualify us to fly to UK. Before you obtain these approvals, they will audit you very well. You have to go through stringent audit, which we passed. We obtained the permit last week.”
The airline also expanded its Asian footprints with the commencement of direct scheduled commercial flights into Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The inaugural flight, operated with one of the airline’s B777s, was airborne from Kano last Tuesday, with 231 passengers.
Air Peace, before now, had been operating charter flights to Saudi Arabia, airlifting Muslim pilgrims. But this inaugural flight officially kicked off its scheduled operations into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Onyema, described the entry into Jeddah as ‘another milestone recorded in the annals of Nigeria’s aviation history’, stating that Jeddah is the airline’s sixth international destination in just nine years of launching commercial flight operations.
He noted that with the entry into Jeddah, Air Peace has increased its presence on the Asian continent.
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