Air Peace adds Airbus A330 to its fleet

Nigeria-based Air Peace added a widebody Airbus A330-300 jet to its fleet, breaking away from their tradition of Boeing 777 widebodies as this became the first Airbus wideboy operating for Air Peace. The A330 is leased from SmartLynx Malta and has 255 economy seats and 30 business class seats.

The A330 comes at a time when Air Peace is facing multiple groundings of their aircraft due to bird strikes. In April and May, the airline reported a total of 6 bird strikes in the months of April and June. For safety reasons, inspections have to be done on the jets after bird strikes to assess the degree of damage and in most if not all cases, the inspections always lead to the Airline having to carry out unscheduled maintenance which can take anything from days to weeks or even months to complete if the damage is extensive and spare parts are not readily available. All this causes a ripple effect on the schedule, resulting in flight delays and cancellations. Also, as the Hajj season commences, Air Peace operates flights from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia using widebody jets to cater to a large number of pilgrims who travel between the two countries. Air Peace has also been expanding its reach, with the launch of flights to Tel Aviv in Israel and Mumbai in India.