Airport certification ‘ill reduce insurance premium——–FAAN boss

Certification of the Nigeria’s aerodromes would reduce insurance premium for the airline operators, President, Airport Council International (ACI), Saleh Dunoma, has said.

In an interview with journalists, Dumoma said that insurance premium for operators in Nigeria, which ranked amongst the highest in the world, will most likely be reduced.

The ACI boss said it would give the international aviation community the confidence to operate at the airport.

The certification of the airport is based on safety; and it is required by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to give the required confidence to international airline operators coming in, that given standards have been met.

Dunoma said there are over 100 open items that need to be closed, stressing that some of them have to do with procedures. He said : “Those ones are easy to close.
Those that have to do with documentations are easy to close. For example, what we publish as FAAN as procedures or processes, when it is found.

For instance, if you say you have Category 9 fire service, you must make sure you have it at 9; in terms of equipment, number of people, in terms of your documentation and your processes. “So, if there are gaps in that, you have to make sure you close them. There are so many of them in so many areas.

“On the airfield, we have those that have do with the airfield lightings and the runway itself, on personnel, documentation, training, and on maintenance. There are so many covering the entire aspect of airport operations.As we speak, there are only few of them that needed to be closed.”

Dunoma, who is also the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), listed funds constraints as one of the challenges the agency faced in the certification processes. He noted that at the beginning, they thought they might not need much resources, but at the end of the day, after the assessment, they discovered that they had a lot to do.

The only thing, he stated that they needed to do was to make provisions in their budget as special fund to address the certification, adding that once they got the assessment and the fund provided, their engineers swung into action.

The engineers, he disclosed came with the estimate of how some of the technical issues, some of the documentation and some of the new things they need to provide to make sure that they close the gaps.

Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo