KEY POINTS

• Air Peace and Embraer will work together to develop a Lagos MRO facility.
  
• The facility will make it less necessary to hire expensive foreign maintenance.
  
• The project is linked to direct flights between Nigeria and Brazil starting in 2025.

Air Peace, Nigeria’s largest airline by fleet size, is going to develop a new Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) center in Lagos.

This will make regional air travel more efficient and cut down on the need for expensive repairs in other countries.

The project is being worked on by Embraer, a Brazilian business that builds jets. It should be done in 12 to 15 months. Allen Onyema is the chairman of the airline.

Air Peace invests in the local aviation infrastructure

It costs more and takes longer for the airline to send its Embraer planes to other nations for maintenance. These services will be able to happen in Nigeria, thanks to the Lagos hub. This will assist the country’s aviation industry keep more money.

Onyema remarked, “By God’s grace, we will lay that foundation here in Lagos,” which illustrates how important the project is to the area. Embraer will be responsible for taking care of its jets at the new location.

A link to Brazil that is significant for business

The new hub will be ready before Air Peace starts flying directly between Nigeria and Brazil in the third quarter of 2025. Both Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva support the project.

Onyema remarked that Brazil’s approach was “good for both sides” and that he was happy that Lula wanted to enhance relations between the two countries.

More commerce and a stronger economy

The center might help arrest a reduction in trade between Nigeria and the US, which has gone from $10 billion to $2 billion in the last ten years, according to Festus Keyamo, Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation.

Air Peace wants to save money by moving the maintenance of its planes to Brazil and developing a route to Brazil. They also want to encourage more commerce and cultural exchange between the biggest economies in Africa and South America.

Allen Onyema wants to grow bigger

Air Peace began in 2013 and now has 32 planes, all of which are Boeing or Embraer. They have ordered eight more. It goes to 20 places, 19 of which are cities in Nigeria and 11 of which are in the UK and West Africa.

Finally, Onyema wants to grow the airline’s business, make Nigeria’s aviation infrastructure better, and make Air Peace one of the best airlines in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Billionaires Africa, the Lagos MRO shows this.