Airlines tasked with incident reporting

By Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo

The Acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr Matthew Lawrence Pwajok has urged pilots, air traffic controllers, airlines, ground handlers, passengers, and other stakeholders in the aviation industry to continue to report aviation incidents to the safety authorities as this would further enhance the relative safety in the industry and also boost confidence in air travel.

Pwajok who was an award recipient at the Association of Foreign Airlines and Representatives in Nigeria (AFARN) safety summit and awards held in Lagos contended that investing in the sensitization of key stakeholders in the area of safety reporting is as important as investing in safety-critical equipment and manpower training, stressing that incident reports were a critical and strategic aspect of the aviation safety chain, because “if you don’t report incidents we can’t control them if we don’t have reports we cannot provide the required risk analysis and mitigations.”

He commended pilots “for being very faithful in incident reporting, even to the detriment of the airlines, as this could sometimes cause slight flight delays while awaiting a review or investigation of the incident by NCAA before releasing the aircraft back for operations.

When these incidents are reported by pilots to ATC, they are immediately relayed to NCAA for investigation, and when the reported event or defect is mitigated, the aircraft is released back to service.

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For instance, we had an occurrence at Escravos yesterday that was reported to the control tower by the pilot, and consequently, NAMA informed AIB and NCAA, and after the required mitigations were affected, the aircraft was released back to service. It is as prompt as that! These are the kind of 24/7 collaboration, cooperation, and coordination that have largely enhanced safety in the sector.”

The NAMA boss appreciated stakeholders in the industry for the enhanced safety in the sector which he attributed to the effective synergy amongst stakeholders and strategic efforts by service providers, DailyTimesNGR gathered.

The NAMA MD opined that the relative safety enjoyed in the sector over the last 10 years was not by chance or luck but as a result of significant investments both in infrastructural deployment and human capital development to enhance safety in the Nigerian airspace, thereby ensuring that major air disasters such as those witnessed between 2005 and 2006 were a thing of the past.