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The distinguished American novelist, E.L. Doctorow, once compared writing fiction to driving a car at night with limited visibility: you know your destination, you know the way, but headlights clarify only the road immediately in front of you. Reporting domestic flight disruptions statistics, one of the statutory duties assigned to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), offers similar challenges, similar difficulties. The destination is a calendar given: a monthly analysis.
But for the report to worth the ink and paper on which the summary of such flight disruptions is written, it must be accurate, not guesswork. Anything outside accuracy approximates to a fictional report. That’s why controversies have been trailing the flight disruptions data released by NCAA for the month of August. Major airlines have challenged the accuracy and interpretation of the figures, particularly the number of flights attributed to individual carriers.
Recall that NCAA published its summary of domestic airlines’ disruption operations for the month of August on September 13, 2026. The report revealed that 4,765 out of 7,961 total domestic flights operated during the month were delayed. This translates to 59.9 percent of total operations. According to the report, Air Peace, Nigeria’s largest carrier and United Nigeria Airline, recorded the highest number of disruptions. Both airlines were alleged to have exceeded 70 percent delay rates in the NCAA figures.
Air Peace alone was wrongly calculated to have had 1,330 delayed flights out of 1,864 operational flights. Make no mistake about it: Anytime a flight is delayed or cancelled, passengers are expected to be angry. It could be frustrating. The consequences are many. Passengers suffer untold hardship. Some missed business appointments. But that should not be a license to resort to criminal acts such as physical attacks on the employees of the airline or its property. There are legitimate channels to seek redress. Such channels include through Consumer Protection mechanisms, among others.
But when such disruptions are wrongly computed, expect the management of the airline mentioned to complain. That’s exactly what the management of Air Peace has done. It has strongly faulted the NCAA’s report, citing fundamental inaccuracies. The fact that the NCAA report did detail reasons for the delays, makes its report suspect and inaccurate as stated by Air Peace. In a statement signed by its Chief Operating officer(COO), Mrs Oluwatoyin Olajide, Air Peace explains why the NCAA’s report contained inaccuracies regarding its operational volume. It said the data released by the regulator failed to reflect the reality of its operations.
Neither did it accurately contextualise the primary drivers of the operational disruptions experienced during the month under review month. In the words of the Airline, “the NCAA report vastly underreported our total flight volume”. The management position is that contrary to the NCAA report, Air Peace operated a total of 2,564 flights in August, as against the 1,864 flights stated in the NCAA’s summary report. “By omitting over 700 fully operational flights from the data pool”, Air Peace has argued that “the NCAA calculations skewed its “actual performance metrics and artificially inflated the reported delay percentage”.
The omission, whether deliberate or otherwise, distorted the airline’s performance metrics and gave an inaccurate picture of its operational performance.
That’s a genuine concern that also raises another pertinent question: why did NCAA commence its monthly disruption series with August, rather than July, following the publication of its first quarter, Q1 and Q2 reports on July 31? As the COO of Air Peace rightly observed, the absence of equivalent July data, coupled with what she described as the “unusually rapid release of the detailed August figures”, raises germane questions about the regulator’s data collection and validation processes.
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Isn’t this curious and unbelievable? Was there anything fishy why NCAA rushed to release its report and omitted several industrial actions in the month under review? That’s some of the questions aviation experts are asking. Many agree with the management of Air Peace that it’s unreasonable that the “early” release of the August publication of the domestic airlines flight disruption should have been accompanied by disclosure that the month in question contained an extraordinary aviation-sector industrial disruption targeted primarily at Air Peace, which significantly affected the airline’s operations.
This is the fact: the effect of the August 11 union disruption of Air Peace’s operations that lasted for over two weeks resulted in the airline rescheduling some of its flights, unavoidable delays and cancellations of flights. Again, the question: why did NCAA rapidly published its report without identifying the causes of the delays attributed to individual carriers instead of publishing wrong figures that could tarnish the reputation of Air Peace despite prevailing operational challenges in the sector? Every question raised regarding the NCAA’s report seems to strengthen the argument that persists, to the effect that, there’s a calculated, coordinated attempts to demarket Air Peace. It didn’t start now.
It came into clear focus when the operations of the airline in Lagos and Abuja were picketed by some union officials while the regulators looked the other way. It may be recalled that in September this year, NCAA ordered Air Peace to come up with a compensation package for passengers affected by a delayed Lagos-Enugu flight No P47100 on September 21. NCAA had claimed that its preliminary investigation found that the airline sent the passengers “wrong notification”. Air Peace complied with the directive by issuing an apology and offered the affected passengers 25% discount on one-way domestic tickets. NCAA’s Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, Michael Achimugu got it all wrong when he advised airlines whose aircraft developed technical problems and are taken out of service to reduce their schedule until the Aircraft on Ground(AOG) is recovered, certified and returned to service. He asked airlines to provide a “buffer” to cater for the AOG. His explanation is simplistic. He failed to take into consideration the fact that aircraft acquisition involves heavy financial burden. It’s not like an ordinary land transportation system.
That’s why the management of Air Peace insists that the “characterisation of these delays failed to differentiate between internal operational issues and severe systemic challenges that are completely outside the airline’s control”.
Contrary to the NCAA’s summary report, Air Peace’s internal review of August 2026, flight data performance analysis revealed that 391 flights which is only 15 percent of the delays that occurred in August, were caused by internal factors.
The rest were as a result of external factors like airport congestion and traffic, bird strikes, unexpected breakdown of airport facilities, adverse weather conditions and aircraft damage by ground handling agencies that seem to target Air Peace. It’s, therefore, logical to say that the narrative that Air Peace is responsible for the delays as contained in the NCAA’s report, is completely false and baseless. Was Air Peace wrong to have disputed the report and made the facts public?
The management may have been constrained to do so, having, in its words, “pushed beyond acceptable limits”, hence it has to go public and state the facts the way they are. NCAA and regulatory agencies should address the root causes of flight disruptions, publish delays and cancellations statistics and ensure that standards are enforced. Any fair-minded person will agree that Air Peace, in spite of operational challenges and other issues in both domestic and global aviation industry, remains committed to safety, on-time performance and passenger satisfaction. Taken together, NCAA should review and audit its data collection methods to ensure that future reports accurately reflect the correct data and delays caused by external-induced operational environment.
