FG commissions low level wind shear at Katsina Airport
The Federal Government said that safety and security are paramount for the turnaround maintenance and restructuring of Nigerian airports.
The Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, stated this in Katsina state, while commissioning the NIMET low level wind shear installed at the Umar Musa Yar’Adua International Airport, Katsina.
The Minister stated that weather phenomena generally affect air navigation and wind shear is one of the most hazardous weather events to aircraft. He further noted that the wind shear occurs when the speed and or direction of the wind changes abruptly. This period is always dangerous when landing or during take offs.
In ensuring that Nigeria is free of the hazard, the Katsina state International airport, is now one among 12 other airports across the country with the low level wind shear alert system, a facility that detects the dangerous wind shear that drops aircraft in low altitudes.
According to records, NIMET low level wind shear has previously caused air fatalities in Nigeria, the most recent being the Sosoliso aircraft which crashed landed in Port Harcourt on December 10, 2005 and the ADC aircraft which crashed while attempting to take-off from Abuja airport on October 29, 2006 with 96 casualties.
Other airports across the country with the LLWAS built by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) include Abuja, Benin, Calabar, Enugu, Ilorin, Kaduna, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Sokoto and Yola.
He said a recent study by the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) and NiMet established that winshear is prevalent in all parents of Nigeria even as AIB aircraft accidents investigations also found out that wind shear phenomena was linked to some accidents.
“Aviation safety and security are top priority issues for the present government. The successful installation of LLWAS at 13 airports in the country by NiMet is therefore in consonance with the aviation safety policy of this administration. The agency has procured and installed other weather monitoring equipment including Meteorological image receivers.
It has increased the number of its upper stations to eight and established a modern ICT infrastructure, which includes, computer clusters, for weather prediction.
The NiMet Director General Dr. Anthony Anuforom, further explained that the wind shear at the Katsina airport,” has the capacity to detect calm, steady winds, wind shifts in relation to the runway, wind gusts, sustained divergent winds, (which indicate wind shear), or strong and sustained divergent winds (indication of microbursts) around the airport.”
He said the facility, built from NiMet internal generated revenue, is in line with the global best practices.
He also indicated that NiMET is taking the Meteorological services provided by it beyond the aviation sector to agriculture, and other sectors.
