The airline alleged that the agency’s data contained “fundamental inaccuracies” in the airline’s operational figures and failed to properly identify the causes of delays recorded during the month.

Air Peace in a statement on Thursday morning by its Chief Operating Officer (COO), Oluwatoyin Olajide, said the NCAA report significantly underreported its flight operations for August, thereby distorting the airline’s actual delay performance.

According to Olajide, while the NCAA report recorded 1,864 flights for the airline during the month, it actually operated 2,564 flights in August.

The airline maintained that that the omission of more than 700 flights from the NCAA’s data pool had the effect of skewing its performance metrics and inflating the percentage of flights reported as delayed.

She also wondered why the NCAA commenced its monthly flight-delay reporting with August data, instead of July, shortly after publishing its first and second quarter reports on July 31.

The statement added: “It is indeed worrisome that there is still no equivalent monthly data located for July, yet the NCAA published unusually granular August airline delay data only 13 days after month-end. Unbelievable!

“It is reasonable to suggest that the early release of the August publication should have been accompanied by disclosure that the month contained an extraordinary aviation-sector industrial disruption, which significantly affected the airline’s operations.

“The effect of the August 11th instigated union disruptions of our operations lingered for over 14 days, leading to rescheduling, avoidable delays and cancellation of flights.”

Olajide also queried why the NCAA report did not identify the causes of the delays attributed to individual airlines.

She argued that doing so could damage the reputation of carriers by creating the impression that the delays were primarily caused by airline operational failures when, according to its own analysis, most of the disruptions resulted from factors outside its control.

According to Air Peace, its internal review of the August operational data indicated that 391 delayed flights were attributable to internal factors, representing about 15 per cent of the delays it recorded during the month.

Air Peace said the remaining delays were caused by external factors, including airport congestion, infrastructure deficiencies, adverse weather, bird strikes, industrial action and damage to aircraft by a ground-handling company.

It explained that its internal delay factors were largely associated with technical issues requiring unscheduled maintenance and fuel-related challenges.

On external disruptions, the airline explained airport congestion and traffic accounted for more than 51 per cent of the external delays it experienced in August.

The airline said one of its aircraft, 5N-BYG, suffered a bird strike in Abuja, damaging its inlet cowl beyond acceptable limits, lamenting that the repair cost about $1.8 million, while the aircraft was grounded for more than a week before he damaged part could be replaced.

The airline therefore called on the NCAA to review and audit its data-collection methodology to ensure that future reports accurately capture airlines’ operational volumes and distinguish between internal and external causes of delays.