The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, has disclosed the reason Canada denied Air Peace landing rights to evacuate Nigerians on Thursday.
According to the Minister, Air Peace, the airline scheduled to evacuate 200 Nigerians from Canada was denied landing rights over lack of license to embark on commercial flights to it’s country.
The flight which was scheduled for evacuation on Thursday, was cancelled in a statement released by the management of Air Peace.
The statement read:
“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,” the statement by Air Peace read.
“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.”
However, Onyeama explained that the cause of the postponement was because Air Peace was denied landing rights over lack of license to embark on commercial flights to Canada, but that efforts were being made to rectify the delay.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
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