Air Peace to establish Lagos maintenance hangar for Embraer jets

air pact with Brazil to boost $2bn trade relations – Keyamo

By Dickson Omobola

Nigeria’s largest airline, Air Peace, has disclosed plans to establish a maintenance facility to service Brazilian multinational aerospace corporation jets, Embraer.

This is just as the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, said the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on formalising the Bilateral Air Service Agreement, BASA, between Nigeria and Brazil would boost the $2 billion trade relations between both countries.

Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, and Keyamo spoke to newsmen at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, as they, alongside other officials of the Federal Government, returned to Nigeria from Brazil.

Onyema said the project, which would commence by September 16, would be ready within 12 to 15 months.

Addressing newsmen, he said the centre, to be built in Lagos, would attract huge economic opportunities to Nigeria.

He said: “It is true that we ordered five planes from Brazil: Five E175 and 16 E2s. Five of them have entered the country already. We are increasing our partnership with Embraer. By September 17, we plan to build a maintenance hangar for our maintenance repair and overhaul, MRO, which Embraer will provide maintenance support. We are going to have a maintenance centre in Lagos, Nigeria, for Embraer jets. We are going to lay the foundation on September 17. Within 12 or 15 months, that maintenance hangar will be ready to go.

“Embraer would provide support to the maintenance centre that would attract huge opportunities to this country. We will no longer go outside the country for maintenance checks. More so, other countries will come to Nigeria for checks. I do not think that they are doing that (support) because we invested in Embraer. When you look around, Air Peace is the only airline with the capacity to do international operations for now.”

Meanwhile, Keyamo said trade relations between both countries dropped from $10 billion to $2 billion in 10 years, expressing optimism that with the newly signed air pact, business activities would get better between both countries.

According to him, direct flights between Nigeria and Brazil would help in making that achievable.

Keyamo said: “Brazil is the biggest economy in South America. Of course, Nigeria is considered the biggest economy in Africa. So, connecting these two economies was key to both presidents (President Bola Tinubu and President Lula Da Silva). Trade between both countries plummeted from $10 billion to $2 billion in 10 years, and that was how things got sour. But with this (direct flights), it will pick up again.

“We are bringing back an actual fulfillment, an actual gain, which is the first major flight between Brazil and Nigeria. So, it is not an audio agreement. Many of us would have landed here (Nigeria before the BASA) tomorrow or the day after. Some people would have gone to the Middle East, to either Doha or Dubai. Many would have gone to Europe to try to connect. Whereas, all we did was to cross the Atlantic, and here we are in Nigeria.”

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