Air Peace has passed the last hurdle towards its plan to begin long-haul operations to serve its yearning customers on international destination.
On Tuesday Nigeria’s largest carrier commenced demonstration demonstration flights to Dakar, Senegal with NCAA inspectors on board from the Murtala Mohammed International airport, Lagos.
Air Peace has secured approval to fly to to Dubai, Sharjah, London, Houston, Guangzhou-China, Mumbai and Johannesburg.
The demonstration flight was embarked on with its B777 aircraft flown by Chief Flight Officer, Captains Victor Egonu and Simon Donughue.
Spokesman of the airline, Chris Iwarah explained that the non-revenue flights to demonstrate Air Peace capabilities with the Boeing 777 next would visit Kano, Port Harcourt, Freetown, Johannesburg and Sharjah.
“This is what goes into ensuring the safety of our valued customers and crew – costly but necessary”, he said.
The airline, which made history as the first Nigerian carrier to acquire and take delivery of a Boeing 777-200 on February 23, 2018 and late last year Mae firm order from Boeing, 10 B737 MAX, assured that it would soon announce dates for the launch of its long-haul operations to London, Houston, Dubai, Sharjah, Guangzhou-China, Mumbai and Johannesburg.
Air Peace, successfully performed partial emergency evacuation and ditching demonstrations as part of the safety tests for the operation of its Boeing 777 aircraft.
Iwarah said the test, which was conducted by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) on Nov. 29, was a major regulatory hurdle on the airline’s path to begin international flight services. He said : “Emergency aircraft evacuation refers to an exercise aimed at evacuating those on an aircraft when an emergency occurs on the ground, in water or mid-flight.
“The ditching demonstration, however, simulates a planned water landing and evaluates the airline’s ability to handle such emergency. “An emergency evacuation demonstration is mostly required when an airline proposes operating a specific aircraft type and model entering into its service for the first time. “Once the signal for it is given, the aircraft’s emergency evacuation equipment and 50 per cent of the required emergency exits and slides must be ready for use in a maximum of 15 seconds. “Although simulated, evacuation drills are a risky operation for crew and other participants — often leading to injury of varying degrees.”
He said the airline’s emergency demonstrators, led by Capt. Simon Donoghue, were able to deploy the four slides of the eight-exit Boeing 777 aircraft within 10.5 seconds, which is 4.5 seconds ahead of the maximum time allowed.
