Air Peace is Nigeria’s largest airline. Nearly all of its flights are within West Africa and to London, which now includes Heathrow. Yet, it has some highly unusual services. For a limited time in December, it has multi-stop Boeing 777 flights from Nigeria and Ghana to the Caribbean.
It’d be easy to conclude that this head-scratching operation is akin to many network decisions made by African airlines, which are not expected to make money. Examples abound of where they make decisions that fly in the face of sense. However, Air Peace’s Caribbean operations are somewhat different, as it is working in partnership with multiple tour operators in Nigeria and Ghana to drive passenger volume.
Air Peace To The Caribbean
Air Peace’s Caribbean-bound flights will leave from Accra on December 20 and 29, stopping in 
Lagos en route. They are timed for the Christmas period, which is theoretically more popular, but the existing demand is exceptionally low. It’ll operate Accra-Lagos-Antigua-Barbados-Port of Spain-Kingston and vice versa, covering 5,544 nautical miles (10,627 km) each way. Obviously, it won’t have traffic rights between the Caribbean cities.
The above routing is from examining the carrier’s booking engine and its schedule disclosure to Cirium Diio and OAG. However, there are considerable discrepancies between what its website shows and what it has submitted to the two data sources, which is highly unusual. Even the operating days don’t fully tally, let alone the departure and arrival times.
Even its website has a hard-to-understand schedule. As such, I’ve refrained from including a leg-by-leg timetable as an illustration of what’s available. The highly unusual nature of this operation means this is a shame. Still, it might make my Weekly Routes article (see the most recent edition).
It Says The 319-Seat 777 Will Be Used, But…
The carrier has submitted that its 319-seat 777 will be used to the Caribbean. According to ch-aviation, only one of its four 777s has this capacity. In fact, they all have different numbers of seats, which is quite silly for such a small subfleet.
The only frame with 319 seats is 5N-BWI, which is a 20.8-year-old 777-300. It was originally delivered to Singapore Airlines in 2005 as 9V-SYK. Flightradar24 shows that 5N-BWI has mainly been flying between Lagos and Gatwick.
This frame is a standard 777-300, not an Extended Range aircraft. However, the theoretical range is well within the distance of the longest leg to the Caribbean (Lagos-Antigua). Still, it remains to be seen if it’ll be used on its Caribbean jaunt, as it’s quite possible that it was scheduled as a placeholder or even in error.
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Hang On: Does This Caribbean Operation Make Sense?!
According to AviaDev, the initial two round-trip services are just an experiment. Sean Mendis, an African aviation specialist who’s renowned for his say-it-as-like-it-is nature, said that they hope to eventually increase the operation to a monthly operation (!). He said,
“Perhaps two flights at Christmas will help to see if they can develop the market. But all of those [Caribbean] places combined are not enough to fill two flights in a year, based on the current traffic levels. This is not something for which there’s existing traffic. They’re going to have to create it.”
Clearly, major questions remain about the sense and validity of it, even with the backing of tour operators, which reduces the risk. It might suggest that it has run out of more ‘normal’ cities to which to deploy its 777s. Very few routes have worked. Still, it is hard not to admit that its Caribbean adventure is very intriguing, but it’s certainly highly unusual.
