Air Peace receives green light to fly to London-Heathrow with new Abuja flights

After months of negotiations, Nigeria’s de facto national carrier, Air Peace, has finally been given the green light to begin flights between Abuja and London-Heathrow Airport (LHR). The airline, which currently serves London-Gatwick Airport (LGW) from Lagos, has been lobbying hard for access rights to Heathrow for years, but with the shortage of slots at the West London Airport, it eventually had to settle for Gatwick, where slots were more readily available. The airline began its Lagos to Gatwick route in March 2024.

The carrier will begin a four-times-weekly service between Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (ABV) in Abuja and London-Heathrow Airport, commencing on October 26, 2025, which marks the start of the IATA winter scheduling season. All flights will be operated by the carrier’s Boeing 777s, of which it currently has three.  

Its pair of 777-200s accommodates 274 passengers in a two-class configuration, while its single 777-300 seats 319 passengers. The flights will complement its three-time weekly service between Lagos and Gatwick during the winter of 2025-26.

GCMap.com“On the international scene, daily flights from Lagos to London are going on, so we’ll start from October, and from then on, we will start Abuja to London flights as the British Authority has granted Air Peace access to Heathrow directly,” said the chairman of Air Peace, Dr Allen Onyema. “We appreciate President Bola Tinubu and the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, for their support. That is a testament to their belief in what we are doing. We have represented Nigeria so well,” he added.

The airline had long argued that UK-based carriers British Airways and Virgin Atlantic were receiving preferential treatment to operate highly lucrative flights between London and Nigeria by having unfettered access to slots at Heathrow. This allegation was denied by the UK Government, stating that Air Peace would be given access to Heathrow as and when appropriate slots became available.

Then, in September 2025, Air Peace wrote to the UK Department of Transport appealing for access to Heathrow to be reviewed while simultaneously re-applying for slots to begin its direct Abuja flights. The application was rejected as it was allegedly filed too late for consideration for the winter 2024/25 season, as well as the summer 2025 scheduling period.

Colin Cooke Photo / Wikimedia CommonsAs reported by Aerospace Global News, in a letter of response to the airline, Louise Haigh, the then-UK Secretary of State for Transport, also clarified the strained position that demand for slots at Heathrow is facing. “As you may be aware, Heathrow Airport is constrained by runway capacity and an air traffic movement limit, which places downward pressure on the number of slots available in any operating season,” she added at the time. “For the Summer 2024 season, a total of 290,580 slots were available, but the number of slots requested reached 319,721.”

Slots have finally come up

However, as scheduling seasons pass, slots do occasionally come available at the UK’s most sought-after air travel gateway. This can be due to airlines dropping services, realigning their slot portfolio at the airport, or the taking back of slots by the airport as the holding airline has not operated the minimum number of services as stipulated by the slot holding agreement (often termed the “use-it-or-lose-it rule”). Airlines have also been known to trade slots in the past. However, although the airlines do not legally own the slots, the practice is not widely reported.

Air Peace It would appear that through some means, Air Peace has managed to acquire the four slot pairs (arrivals and departure slots) it requires to begin its highly desired Abuja service at last. Time will tell whether the airline eventually transfers its Gatwick to Lagos flights to Heathrow.

Other new routes

In other news, while the airline remains banned from flying to Dubai due to restrictions placed on the airline by the UAE authorities, the carrier confirmed that it will begin flights between Nigeria and Guangzhou in China in October 2025, with flights to Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean due to begin a month earlier. The airline expects the fourth Boeing 777 to be delivered to allow for these services to commence.

Air Peace currently operates a fleet of Airbus A320s, Boeing 737s, Boeing 777s, Dornier 328-300s, Embraer 145s, and Embraer 195-E2s, some of which are flown on wet-lease arrangements from other carriers. The airline flies on 39 routes to 21 destinations across 11 countries, according to ch-aviation. 

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Air Peace receives green light to fly to London-Heathrow with new Abuja flights

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