Air Peace says it has began shakedown flights of several of its fleets of aircraft, as the resumption of domestic flight operations drew closer.
Spokesperson of the airline, Stanley Olisa said in a statement on Thursday in Lagos, that the shakedown flights were part of measures the airline had developed to guarantee safety of both passengers and crew when operations resumed.
Olisa said the aircraft had been in storage mode for a couple of months and extensive maintenance checks had been carried out to keep them up to the required standards.
“All the aircraft took to the skies flying to Abuja, Port Harcourt and back to Lagos without passengers.
“These flights were aimed at ensuring that the aircrafts are in tip-top condition, haven been grounded for close to three months though they have been under very strict storage maintenance.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the airline has a mixed fleet of 25 aircrafts which includes three wide body aircraft, the Boeing 777.
Olisa said within the period of flight ban, the airline had ramped up technical maintenance of all its aircraft, scaled up cabin refresh and carried out thorough disinfection to ensure they remained fit for the skies when the authorities resumed operations.
He added that the aircrafts were now being brought out of storage and that the pilots had been testing them.
According to him, all pilots and flight attendants have been retrained in line with NCAA directives.
On the its readiness to resume regular flights, he said the airline had been operating ‘special flights’ to local and international destinations and had more of such flights in the works.
“This accentuates our preparedness for operation restart as our pilots, cabin crew and engineers have been hands-on and are very current. So, we are 100 per cent ready to resume.
Olisa said that Air Peace had been operating charter and evacuation flights to various international destinations even as the flight ban persisted.
He said that in April, the airline delivered Federal Government’s medical supplies from Turkey and China to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Olisa said it had also operated several evacuation flights to India, Israel and China in the last two months.
