Owerri-bound Air Peace flight turns back mid-air, blames ‘sunset airport’ operation

An air passenger has accused Air Peace of delaying its Abuja-Owerri flight for 17 hours.

The passenger, simply known as @Grace_undiluted on X, wrote via her handle that the airline also turned back mid-air due to the closure time at the destination airport.

Grace made this known in a series of posts on April 17.

According to the passenger, Air Peace sold the ticket “at N120,000” from Abuja to Owerri, and the flight was scheduled to leave Abuja at 4:30 pm and land at 5:30 pm in Owerri.

However, the X user said the flight ended up delaying until 6:18 pm due to the absence of a pilot. 

“Half way on air, we were told that they can’t go anymore because Owerri airport closes at 6:40 so they turned back,” Grace wrote.

“Arrived at Abuja again and took more than 20 minutes before passengers were addressed and let out and another 20+ minutes to have someone tell us what will happen next. 

“They then promised us a bus to drive us to a hotel to sleep but it’s past 9pm and the bus is nowhere to be found after leaving with a few people in the first round.

“We are all stranded, scattered around. I myself was coming from Kano but missed my connecting flight with Dana air because Azman delayed for 1 hour+ then I went ahead to book air peace because I needed to get home today but here I am, stranded after spending over 300k on domestic flights today.” 

The passenger said at about 10 pm, the airline said the bus was stuck “so there is no hope”. 

“They also said the restaurant is closed so no food but we should go back to the hall so we can sit and get water,” the passenger wrote.

 “Please keep in mind that this flight was originally scheduled for 3:50 then 4:30 just to leave at 6:18pm. This flight was supposed to land in owerri by 5:30 so if they had kept to time, none of this would have happened.”

The X user said the airline eventually moved the flight again “after assuring people that they will fly them to owerri by 7am tomorrow” —to 10 am on Thursday.

Speaking to TheCable on the issue, Stanley Olisa, Air Peace spokesperson, said the aircraft had an unscheduled maintenance.

“The 4.30 flight, the aircraft, we had an unscheduled (unplanned) maintenance on the aircraft,” he said.

“That is why the flight was delayed. Upon departure, we could not land in Owerri because it is one of the sunset airports in Nigeria, so we had to go back to Abuja.”

However, he said hotel accommodation was provided for all passengers.

Sunset airports are airfields across the country operating between sunrise and sunset.

Furthermore, TheCable tried to ascertain why the aircraft took off knowing that it was a sunset airport, however, there was no response from the spokesperson.