Air Peace took delivery of a dry-leased Boeing 737-700NG, registered EL-HRN, from AerCap Holdings at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, on 8 November 2025, in a ceremony attended by aviation minister Festus Keyamo, the NCAA's Director-General, FAAN's Managing Director, and representatives of Boeing and Fidelity Bank. AerCap's vice president of leasing, Gad Wavomba, said it had been nearly a decade since a dry-lease transaction of this kind was completed with a Nigerian carrier, following a period in which international lessors had effectively blacklisted the market.
Rebuilding Confidence With Lessors
The delivery came eleven months after Nigeria formally adopted the Irrevocable Deregistration and Export Request Authorisation advisory circular, a legal framework intended to reassure lessors that aircraft could be repossessed without obstruction in the event of a lease default, and roughly a year after the government resolved the trapped foreign-exchange revenue that had driven several international airlines out of the country. Under the dry-lease arrangement, AerCap supplied only the aircraft, with Air Peace responsible for crewing, insurance, maintenance and fuel.
Officials and industry figures at the ceremony described the transaction as evidence that global capital markets were regaining confidence in Nigerian aviation, with expectations that other domestic carriers would be able to pursue similar dry-lease agreements to expand and modernise their fleets in the years that followed.
