Chinelo Obogo, Lagos
Air Peace on Sunday signed a contract for three additional E195-E2s, confirming purchase rights from the original contract signed in April this year.
With the new signing at the Dubai Airshow, Air Peace has made a total order of 13 E195-E2s with 17 purchase rights for the same model, which would be delivered in May next year.
These new E195-E2s will be included in Embraer’s 2019 fourth-quarter backlog and have a value of $212.6 million, based on Embraer’s current list prices.
The April signing made Air Peace the first launch customer of the new brand of E-jets in Africa and launch customer of the brand of business class configuration for its ordered airplanes worldwide.
The aircraft will have dual configurations with 12-seater business class and 102-seater in the economy class.
Air Peace Chief of Finance and Administration, Ejiroghene Eghagha who signed the new deal on behalf of the airline said, “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.
“We are receiving impressive data about the aircraft’s economics when in revenue service, and this was a driver to place this new firm order with Embraer. We look forward to receiving our first aircraft, which will enhance connectivity in Nigeria and the African region. The new order will gradually replace our existing fleet, which will make us the airline with the youngest fleet in the world.
“It is our plan to connect all the Nigerian cities that have airports and burst the triangular routes by connecting flights to direct destinations.
“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. 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.”