Amid visa delays, Air Peace cuts capacity on Lagos-Jo’burg route

•Nigerian airlines missing in top 10 African carriers

Nigerian flag carrier, Air Peace airline, has restored operations on the Lagos-Johannesburg route, though with reduced capacity of the operating aircraft.

Contrary to the massive Boeing 777 aircraft erstwhile flown on the route and other international corridors, the airline resumed the South African operations this week with the medium range 124-seater Embraer195-E2 airplane.

The Guardian learnt that the choice of regional aircraft and attendant smaller travellers were due to the yet unresolved delays in issuance of travel visas by the South African Embassy.

The biggest Nigerian carrier, by fleet capacity and passenger traffic, in August announced a 60 days break from the Lagos-Johannesburg route. It cited low patronage on account of the South African Embassy’s delay in granting approval to visa applicants in Nigeria, among other operational reasons.

At the end of the 60-day hiatus, spokesperson of the airline, Stanley Olisa, confirmed the resumption of flight services last Sunday.

The resumption, it was learnt, may not be unconnected with the coming year-end travels, though the fortune of Nigerians travelling to South Africa has not improved as the visa application protocol is still hectic due to a backlog at the Embassy.

But Air Peace’s use of an Embraer195-E2 124-seater airplane on the route is a tough choice. At 2,803 miles (4,511km), it’s the longest scheduled route by an Embraer aircraft. It’s just shy of the 3,000 miles (4,828km) often considered long-haul, and it’s longer by distance than Boston to San Francisco or London Heathrow to Dakar.

According to Flightradar24, flight P47563 left Nigeria at 02:44 and arrived in Johannesburg 5h 52m later at 09:36 local time. Returning, P47564 departed at 12:09 and arrived back home at 17:25 after some 6h 16m.

It is currently by far the longest scheduled passenger flight by an Embraer aircraft. It was operated by 5N-BYG, a 1.9-year-old E2 delivered in March 2021. It has 124 seats: 12 in business and 112 in economy.

In a related development, Air Peace and other Nigerian carriers have missed out on the log of 10 best African carriers in 2022, according to Skytrax World Airline survey.

Skytrax, which yearly evaluates best performing airlines globally, recently released its award list for the year. Indeed, it is the world’s largest, yearly airline passenger satisfaction survey, as it uses a value for money metric system to determine the methodology for its surveys.

A total of 13.42 million eligible survey entries were counted in the final results. The customer survey was carried out from September 2021 to August 2022.

In the African category, Ethiopia Airlines comes top again after emerging first in 2021. In the second position is Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan national carrier and also the largest airline in the country. Third is the South African national carrier, South African Airlines (SAA).

Others, in order of their ratings are: Kenya Airways; Air Mauritius; EgyptAir; RwandAir; Safair from South Africa; Fastjet, a subsidiary of Fastjet Limited UK, operating primarily in Zimbabwe, and lastly, Air Seychelles, the national airline of the Republic of Seychelles.