• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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UAE concedes to Nigeria, increases Air Peace’s frequencies

Russia – Ukraine Conflict: Air Peace deploys aircraft to evacuate Nigerians

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has made some concessions to Nigeria by granting Air Peace, Nigeria’s domestic carrier, six weekly flights to Dubai.

Stakeholders say the diplomatic issue may be coming to an end with the recent concession by UAE, but there are still uncertainties as to whether Emirates would still keep the 21 frequencies it had before the face-off last occurred last week.

The Dubai Civil Aviation Authority had in a letter dated December 13, to the CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, entitled, ‘Operations of Air Services between Dubai and Nigeria’, signed by Mohammed Ahli, the DCAA director-general, said, “Relations between our two countries go a long way back and we value these relations immensely. We surely wish to facilitate easy and safe travel for the people, between our two brotherly countries.”

The letter further stated, “We write in reference to Air Peace’s possible/intended operations to/from Dubai Airports (DXB). We have received information from Dubai Airports with regard to slot availability at DXB –Terminal 1 and as a gesture of goodwill and in support of UAE and Nigeria relations, in case Air Peace wish to start their flights, slots have been blocked by Dubai Airports as A0540LT D0800LT- All days except day six.

Read also: UAE revokes decision of disallowing Nigerian travellers to Dubai

“We would highly appreciate it if Air Peace could kindly reach out to Dubai Airports-ACL and inform them of their intentions to operate by Thursday, December 16th, 2021, and accordingly confirm the blocked slots.”

The Dubai Airports have also confirmed that dnata-the ground handling agents at Dubai had sent the ground handling quotations to Reham Mustafa – the country manager, he said.

He said Emirates Flight Catering, is working on the quotation, adding that he looked forward to Air Peace operating with utmost confidence to/from Dubai at the soonest.

There is no official response yet either from the Ministry of Aviation or Air Peace whether they would accept the conditions attached to the daily flight granted to Air Peace.

Hadi Sirika, the minister of aviation, and Musa Nuhu, the director-general of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), restricted Emirates to just one weekly flight to Abuja after discussions broke down over restricting Nigerian flag carrier Air Peace to just one flight to Sharjah.

In response, Emirates withdrew flight services from Nigeria in what led to a diplomatic row between the two countries.