• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Air Peace Dubai route records 75% load factor

Air Peace reiterates commitment to travellers’ safety, comfort at 5

Five months after Nigeria’s largest carrier, Air Peace, commenced operations to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the carrier is seeing about 75 percent load factor on the route and has maintained its three-weekly flights it started with.
Since it made its inaugural flight into Sharjar on July 5, 2019, AirPeace has continued to operate three times weekly on the route – Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays – from only Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos. Emirates, on the other hand, operates two daily flights from both MMIA and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, amounting to 14 frequencies in a week.
Stakeholders in the aviation sector had raised doubts as to whether Air Peace could sustain the route and frequency as a result of aero politics on the route, but the airline has assured that it would.
The airline has also kept its ticket fares relatively lower than its major competitors in the market.
Stanley Olisa, corporate communications executive, Air Peace, told BusinessDay that the carrier is doing well on the Dubai route and would sustain its operations as it is the only Nigerian airline on that route.
“This is impressive and we shall keep performing better, with strategic plans for expanding our international routes,” Olisa said. “There have been challenges but we have held our heads high. Nigerians should rest assured that on the Dubai route, we shall continue to give them best-in-class flight experience.”
But a top travel agent told BusinessDay that while the airline is doing well on the route with respect to load factor, it has continued to struggle with pricing which seems to be the strong competitive edge it has over other high-end carriers.
“I think they are struggling. Emirates has continued to run promos just to see if they can frustrate Air Peace out of the route,” said the travel agent who craved anonymity.
“Air Peace is currently cheaper but even if Emirates is more expensive, people often prefer to go for Emirates than Air Peace because they have built that trust over time,” he said.
BusinessDay’s checks show that a return ticket on Lagos-Dubai route using high-end airlines such as Emirates and Qatar Airways costs between N300,000 and N370,000, compared to Air Peace which is offering its passengers between N203,000 and N270,000 for a return ticket on the same route.
BusinessDay learnt that when Air Peace commenced operation on the route, it had high patronage because it charged as low as N155,000-N175,000 for a return ticket on Sharjah route, but the airline is currently charging over N200,000, making the average passenger book for ticket months ahead using Emirates or other high-end carriers in a bid to get cheaper rates.

The travel agent advised domestic airlines to learn to focus on their area of strength.

“Air Peace should have just consolidated on West Coast. All Nigerian airlines that have gone to London, Dubai or US never survived it. If Medview did not go to London or Dubai, it would still have been in operations. They can’t compete with Emirates,” he said.

John Ojikutu, aviation security consultant and secretary-general of the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), thinks Sharjah is a wrong route to start with.

“Sharjar is a connecting point, not a hub. Which airline would Air Peace be partnering with? Can Air Peace compete in airfares with airlines on that route? Time will tell,” Ojikutu said.

“Whichever airline goes into code sharing may have to reduce its frequencies to Nigeria or to Air Peace’s final destination, at what cost to the airline or to Air Peace? Either way, the cost of airfares to the passenger will be the determinant factor,” he said.

He suggested that the best or only option for Nigerian carriers on international routes is direct to London or any state east coast or central state of US as these are the major routes of Nigerian travellers.

But Allen Onyema, chairman, Air Peace, has restated that the airline is well prepared to ride the storm.
“Before you go into any business, you need to study the business and the environment. You have to know that airline business, for example, is a risky one. What are the factors that have made many airlines in Nigeria fall by the wayside? You really need to know where you are coming from, where the other airlines are coming from and what has been responsible for their failure,” Onyema said.