•Muritala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos
The industrial action by aviation unions on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, grounded operations at the domestic wings of Nigeria’s two busiest airports – Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMA), Lagos, and the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja – in a coordinated picketing exercise that singled out Air Peace, disrupted thousands of passenger journeys and raised fresh questions about who controls access to critical aviation infrastructure.
The action, led by the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) alongside the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC), forced the cancellation and suspension of Air Peace flights at both terminals, stranding passengers and rippling into the schedules of other domestic carriers whose aircraft, crew and slots share the same congested airport infrastructure, reports Daily Independent.
Air Peace: ‘Why Single Us Out?’
Addressing journalists in Lagos a day after the disruption, Air Peace’s Chief Operating Officer, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Olajide, said the airline lost more than N2 billion in revenue from the one-day shutdown alone – a figure she stressed excludes passenger refunds and compensation claims still being assessed.
She rejected the unions’ framing of the action as a labour dispute, arguing instead that Air Peace had been deliberately targeted over grievances that apply across the entire industry.
“We are all witnesses to the violence, intimidation and disruption meted out to Air Peace, our employees and our passengers yesterday (Tuesday),” Olajide said, adding that the unions’ two stated grievances – the five percent Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) owed to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), and the absence of unionisation among Air Peace staff – were neither unique to the carrier nor a legitimate basis for shutting down airport operations.
On the TSC, she noted that the NCAA’s director-general has confirmed that airlines generally, not Air Peace alone, are engaging the regulator on outstanding remittances under a structured payment arrangement.
“So why did you have to do a selective picketing of Air Peace when we already have a judgment against them?”
Olajide asked, referring to a Federal High Court ruling obtained by Air Peace employees in April 2024 (Suit No. FHC-L-CS-1344-2023) restraining the NLC, TUC, ATSSSAN and other unions from coercing staff into union membership or harassing them at work.
Olajide also alleged that several Air Peace employees were assaulted during the picketing, including a female staff member she said was “left bleeding and bruised,” and said the airline holds video evidence it intends to submit for an independent investigation.
She questioned how protesters gained access to operational areas of the airports in the first place, and pointed to what she called inconsistency in the unions’ campaign – claiming picketers urged travellers to avoid Air Peace while other carriers with similar TSC arrears and non-unionised staff continued flying unhindered.
“Our position is therefore unequivocal: our employees have the constitutional right to choose, our passengers have the constitutional right to travel, and Air Peace has the right to operate without unlawful interference,” she said, calling on the Federal Government, security agencies, FAAN and the NCAA to investigate.
The Regulatory Breach
Sindy Foster, Principal Managing Partner at Avaero Capital Partners, argued that Tuesday’s event goes well beyond an industrial relations quarrel with one airline and instead exposed a lapse in regulatory control over Nigeria’s airports.
She noted that the NCAA knew in advance that unions intended to act, and that the director-general had specifically asked them not to picket after being told airlines had begun paying down TSC arrears – yet the action went ahead regardless.
For Foster, the central question is not whether the NCAA opposed the picketing in principle, but what concrete steps it took beforehand to prevent foreseeable interference with the system it regulates, and what coordination occurred with FAAN and aviation security (AVSEC) authorities.
“NCAA has regulatory oversight responsibilities for airlines, airports, aviation security and the economic regulation of the industry. Yet on Tuesday, unions were ‘allowed’ to interfere in areas falling directly within that regulatory environment,” she said, adding that she used the word “allowed” deliberately, given that the NCAA knew in advance that the unions intended to act and that its director-general had specifically asked them not to picket after airlines had started paying down their arrears. Foster argued that what occurred could not be reduced to a labour disagreement with a single airline.
“Unions inserted themselves into the enforcement of alleged TSC/CSC liabilities, a statutory regulatory matter between NCAA and the airlines which NCAA says it was already addressing and over which the DGCA had specifically asked the unions not to picket,” she said, noting that the unions’ own representative later “acknowledged that unions are ‘not regulatory enforcers’,” even though, in her account, “Air Peace was deliberately selected as the first target and we were told this was a ‘signal of what is to come’ for other airlines allegedly indebted to aviation agencies.”
She went further, describing the incident as a three-layered breach of the aviation system rather than a narrow industrial dispute.
“The action was not confined to Air Peace’s corporate premises. Airport entrances were blocked. This affected access to infrastructure serving the entire aviation system, not simply the company against which the unions claimed to have grievances,” she said, adding that the operational fallout also spread well beyond the airline in question: “Those airlines were not parties to Air Peace’s industrial relations dispute.
Their passengers certainly were not. Nor were they parties to whatever regulatory issues existed between individual airlines and NCAA.”
Foster said the burden now falls squarely on the regulator to account for its response, both before and after the fact.
“Before the event, what did the NCAA do beyond asking the unions not to proceed to prevent foreseeable interference with the areas it regulates? What coordination took place with FAAN, AVSEC and other relevant authorities?
What contingency arrangements were made to protect airport access and airline operations?” she asked, insisting that scrutiny must cover “the original interference in a regulatory matter, the obstruction of airport access, the impact on airlines and passengers, the conduct of protesters, the conduct of airline personnel, the response of airport security and the actions or inaction of the institutions responsible for protecting the aviation system.” As she puts it: “Same incident. Same evidence. Same rules. Same regulatory scrutiny.”
She called for scrutiny of the full chain of events – from the original decision to picket, through the obstruction of airport access, to the conduct of security personnel and the institutions responsible for protecting the aviation system – rather than a narrow inquiry into Air Peace’s own conduct during the confrontation.
Dr. Alex Nwuba, President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), said public debate had overlooked the travellers who bore the brunt of the disruption.
While he agreed Air Peace has a reasonable case that losses caused by union action – missed meetings, forfeited hotel bookings and other consequential costs – should not be treated as the airline’s liability, he noted the carrier still absorbed direct costs from refunds, rebooking and restoring normal operations.
Nwuba cautioned against a prolonged legal contest, arguing that a negotiated settlement would better serve the industry, the workforce and, above all, passengers than a drawn-out dispute that consumes resources on all sides.
