Air Peace says a fire alert that sounded in the cockpit of one of its wet-leased aircraft shortly after it landed and parked at Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, has been confirmed false, with all passengers safely evacuated and no injuries recorded.
The airline said the aircraft had completed its scheduled service and was parked at the terminal, with passengers preparing to disembark, when the captain received a fire alert and activated standard precautionary safety procedures. Airport emergency services responded, and Air Peace said its Maintenance and Engineering team was carrying out a comprehensive assessment to determine what triggered the alert, while confirming no actual fire was found on the aircraft. A wet lease arrangement, under which an airline operates aircraft together with crew, maintenance, and insurance provided by the lessor, was the basis on which the affected aircraft was flying.
Part of a Busier Year for Air Peace Incidents
The false alarm is the latest in a series of operational and safety-related events involving Air Peace aircraft over roughly the past year, spanning different circumstances rather than a single recurring cause. They include a Boeing 737 runway excursion at Port Harcourt in July 2025, a ground-handling collision involving a luggage conveyor vehicle and an Embraer 195-E2 at Lagos in December 2025, a Boeing 777 that returned to Abuja in March 2026 after a suspected bird-strike cracked its windscreen en route to London Heathrow, and a Lagos-Asaba flight that turned back on 27 August 2026 because of poor visibility around the Asaba runway.
The incident comes even as Air Peace continues to expand its network. The carrier recorded Africa's largest year-on-year increase in scheduled airline seats in July 2026 according to OAG's African aviation market report, adding roughly 121,000 seats — a 50.6 percent rise — though Kenya Airways subsequently overtook it for tenth place among Africa's largest carriers by scheduled capacity in August.
