The Chairman of Nigerian indigenous carrier Air Peace, Allen Onyema, has raised the alarm that foreign carriers operating the Nigeria-UK route are allegedly conspiring to send Air Peace out of international operations by crashing airfares on the route.
There is an “unspoken alliance” among foreign airlines to use lower pricing to eject Air Peace from the Nigeria-London route, alleged a visibly displeased Onyema on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
“If they take out Air Peace prematurely, this country will pay dearly for it, 10 times over, billions will be lost, there will be another heavy strain on the naira,” he said.
All of a sudden, other airlines are underpricing, and the plan is to take Air Peace out. If they succeed, Nigerians will pay 20 times over.
On March 30, 2024, Air Peace reciprocated the lopsided Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) between Nigeria and the United Kingdom when the local airline began direct flight operations from Lagos to Gatwick Airport in London.
The Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo; and his counterpart at the Trade and Investment Ministry, Doris Uzoka-Anita; were onboard the inaugural Lagos-London flight alongside businessmen and women.
The development has been applauded by many industry observers with more local airlines being encouraged to commence international flights to profitable routes.
The price of international flight ticket on the Lagos-London route was as high as N3.5m but with Air Peace pegging a return economy class ticket for N1.2m, foreign airlines such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Qatar Airways have been forced to slash their prices to stay competitive.
Now Air Peace did this (brought down prices) & they crashed their prices from 17m to 5m, the dollar did not change!
They were using the dollar as a reason to do whatever they were doing to us.
