The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, has revealed the reason Air Peace landing rights to evacuate Nigerians were denied in Canada on Thursday.
According to the Minister, Air Peace that was scheduled to airlift 200 Nigerians from Canada was denied landing rights due lack of license to undertake commercial flights to Canada.
The flight that was earlier scheduled for evacuation on Thursday was called off in a statement released by the management of Air Peace.
The statement reads: “The management of Air Peace wishes to announce that its evacuation flight to Canada previously scheduled for May 14, 2020, has been postponed due to logistics issues as communicated to the airline by the Nigerian High Commission in Canada.
“Once the issues are resolved with the Canadian authorities and a new date is issued by the High Commission, we shall duly communicate same to the public.”
Onyeama however explained that the evacuation flight was postponed because Air Peace was not given landing rights due to lack of license to carry out commercial flights to Canada and that efforts were being put in place to end the delay.
He said: “This is the case indeed that the Canadian government denied landing rights on the grounds that this particular Nigerian carrier did not have licence to undertake commercial flights to that country and was not known to that country for commercial flights.
“Our high commissioner in Canada is engaging with the Canadian government on this issue and we’re hopeful that we can have the decision reversed.
“The argument that he’s putting forward, which is a strong argument, is that this is not a regular commercial flight to Canada to take passengers, but that this is an emergency flight and that there is a difference between the two. So, the negotiations are ongoing and we are hopeful that there will be a positive result.”
