PUNCH reports that the management of Air Peace has said that the Visas of all the 264 passengers that it conveyed to Saudi Arabia recently were verified, despite the revocation of the Visas of 177 of them by authorities in foreign nations.

The 177 passengers visas were cancelled after they landed in Jeddah on Monday from Kano. However, the Saudi Arabia said the passengers provided incorrect information to obtain a category of Visa that doesnt apply to them. The Air peace statement issued by its Chief Operating Officer, Oluwatoyin Olajide said that for avoidance of doubt, Air Peace is a scheduled operator between Nigeria and Jeddah and said the said flight was indeed a scheduled flight and not a chartered /UMAR/HAJJ or any special flight.

This Scheduled flight means that they were allowed to airlift all categories of passengers with different types of visas as long as their visas are valid and approved by the Saudi authorities. She said they are not limited ti UMRAH or HAJJ visas alone on the scheduled flight. She also said that the ”visas of all passengers on the said flight to Jeddah were checked and verified through the requisite procedures and were vetted to be valid before departure. ”The visas were verified using visa confirmation platform provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Arabia, which confirmed the validity of each passenger’s visa before passengers were allowed to check in for the flight”

The airline said that all the visas of the 264 passengers were duly verified, confirmed and accepted as authentic for the trip through vital portal provided by the by the Saudi authorities adding that ”if not, no passengers would have been able to depart from Nigeria. This is just one of two steps required before a passenger is accepted on the flight to Saudi Arabia. We equally use the system to determine the admissibility or otherwise of each passenger on that flight. The APIS was live between Air peace’s reservation system and Saudi national Travel Security Centre Carrier Portal to transmit passenger details before departure, ti the Saudi authorities to determine the admissibility or otherwise of the passengers. No form of cancellation from the Saudi authorities was received against these passengers despite the live transmission of their details”