Coronavirus: Air Peace downsizes flight operations

The ongoing spread of the coronavirus across the world has started taking its negative toll on Nigerian airlines as Air Peace has downsized its operations in response to the adverse effects of the pandemic disease.

The airline said it took the decisive decision after an emergency meeting with its top management staff to review its operations in the face of the disease, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has already declared as a global pandemic.

The management also announced several measures aimed at addressing the adverse effects occasioned by the disease.

According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the airline, Mrs. Toyin Olajide, Air Peace, after an emergency meeting, took the decision to cut down its flights following a tremendous decline in passengers’ traffic and the need to cut costs.

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She said: “Air Peace, as a result of the adverse effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on passenger traffic, has today taken the hard decision to downsize our flight operations in order to cut the mounting costs occasioned by the pandemic.”

She went on to say that as a result of this development, the airline will be suspending its operations to Dakar-Senegal and Monrovia-Liberia and cutting down its Freetown-Sierra Leone operations and Banjul-Gambia operations to one flight a week.

She disclosed that the airline would also be reducing its operations into Accra from Lagos to just two flights daily and suspend its Abuja-Accra operations.

“On the domestic scene, we are reducing our frequencies while at the same time, restructuring our operations by deploying our choppers to more airports.

“Our international operations into Dubai through Sharjah International airport shall be suspended from next week as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has shut its airports to nationals from other countries including but not limited to Nigeria,” she added.