Nigerian Private Airline, Air Peace has signed a $212.6 million contract with Brazilian aerospace company for the purchase of three additional Embraer 195-E2s regional jets.
According to The Nation newspaper, the signing, sealed at the Dubai Airshow, brings the airline’s total firm order to 13 E195-E2s, with 17 purchase rights for the same model, which delivery would begin in May 2020.
Kingsley Olisa, the airline’s spokesperson said the contract is a confirmation of purchase rights from the original agreement signed with the Aircraft Company earlier in April 2019.
The E195-E2s aircraft will have dual configurations with 12-seater business class and 102-seater in the economy class.
Air Peace Chief of Finance and Administration, Mrs Ejiroghene Eghagha said the purchase will help in expanding the airline’s dealings.
“The E195-E2 is the perfect aircraft to expand our domestic and regional operations and the new deliveries will ease our subsidiary fleet in the Air Peace Hopper to actualise our ‘no-city-left-behind initiative which we shall continue to execute”.
“It is our plan to connect the whole Nigerian cities that have airports and burst the triangular routs by connecting flights to direct destinations.
Air Peace is looking forward to serving Nigerians with these brand new aeroplanes and adding more routes to the existing ones for the overall development of our country,” Eghagha added.
“We will like to develop new routes to enhance the nation’s economy.
We will like to connect Owerri to Kano, Benin to Port Harcourt, Ibadan to some destinations in the northern part of the country, the airline said.
We will also like to connect Sokoto to Maiduguri, Lagos to Gombe. We would connect these cities without stops in Lagos or Abuja.
“We will use our 50-seater Embraer ERJ 145 jets, which we acquired for this purpose.
We have just added two of the brand to our existing six, making it eight aircraft.
As the new deliveries arrive we utilise the 50-seater jets to connect every city in the country,” Mrs Eghagha added.
