UK, British airlines planning to muscle out Air Peace from lucrative Lagos-London aviation route, say observers

Air Peace’s foray into highly lucrative Lagos -London route may not be a walk in the park, after all, contrary to his media posturing recently, reports seem to suggest.

The airline appears to be facing open hostility from mangers of Gatwick, London Airport, which, as aviation business observers insist, could be an inkling of both business and diplomatic proxy war being fought by British Airways, BA, and Virgin Airlines on the business end while UK government, subtly appears to be looking the other way while Air Peace is being muscled out of the route.

London-Lagos route is one of Africa’s most lucrative aviation route but currently being monopolized by BA and Virgin.

Before Air Peace, there had been Arik Air, MedView, Bellview, all Nigerian airways but all muscled out of the lucrative routes in the past.

Allen Onyema, chairman of the Nigerian airline recently stated that the aviation company’s Lagos to Gatwick Airport, London route is already booked till September.

He also stated that Air Peace is set on including New York and Huston, all in US to the new routes to be plied by the Nigerian airline.

But observers including customers who have plied the company’s new route say that Gatwick Airport management is making it look like Air Peace is not good enough.

First to raise alarm in this regard is Rufai Oseni, ace on air personality and journalist with Arise television on his X (formerly Twitter).

Gatwick uncharacteristically omitted Air Peace inaugural flight on their social media handle, a matter Oseni pointed out.

“My friend had a look at Gatwicks Instagram to see if Air Peace received a water Canon salute when the inaugural flight landed.

Not only did Air Peace not receive a water canon salute but also Gatwick did not even bother to announce the inaugural flight on their Instagram.

“Airports always announce new flights on their social media.

“You can see in the profile above that they announced new flights with airlines from Azerbaijan and Swiss Air in the last few days.

“This is disgraceful behaviour by Gatwick.

“Air Peace PR personnel really need to make noise about these things,” the journalist said.

One of the passengers on the inaugural flight, Jide Iyaniwura, corroborated this observation with other observations at Gatwick, stating that they bordering on outright act of sabotage of the operation of the Nigerian airline’s operations.

“The airport operation was designed to look like Air Peace is not efficient. People don’t really know that the ground operations are not really in the hands of the airline operators,” he narrated about his experience on that inaugural flight from Gatwick to Muritala Mohammed Airport in Lagos,” Iyaniwura said.

He boarded the airline on its 30 march, for the 10:25 flight.

“Do you know that it was the night before the check in that they informed Air Peace that they were changing desk? And they changed it from a fully operational one to the one that didn’t have an operational conveyor belt?

“Air Peace did everything right.

“They communicated to us three days before, two days before on the day itself that they were going to open the desk at so and so time,” Iyaniwure said.

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