The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has berated airline operators in the country for having aircraft not fitted with facilities to align with equipment on ground to aid landing and take-off during harmattan period.
Speaking exclusively with Daily Times in his office, on Thursday, the Managing Director of NAMA, Engr Emmanuel Anasi, disclosed that all the Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) were working, while the agency has implemented the Performance Base Navigational (PBN) approaches in 20 airports.
He said the PBN was implemented in four major airports of Lagos, Abuja,Port Harcourt and Kano in January 2012 while it was done in the rest airports gradually, adding that the agency has standard arrival route, standards instrument departure route for the four airports, making it the first in Africa to develop it.
Anasi said these procedures were designed to take advantage of advanced system to handle aircraft fitted with the capability of flying PBN.
According to him, “onus lies on our domestic operators to get the required equipment on board to be able to fly PBN and also to train flight crew to also fly these procedures and also get NCAA approval to fly these procedures, the rules in NCAA requires flight crew training, aircraft equipment and then a flight manual,” the NAMA boss noted.
He called on the airlines to be updated to be able to fly PBN procedures that uses satellite systems with higher level of accuracy and integrity in the system in terms of guidance for both approaching and landing which could be very useful in severe situations.
“In poor visibility operation like this, airline that are equipped with this capacity can take advantage of that. NAMA is also aware that our ILS need to be upgraded to the category that will be able to allow aircraft to operate at very low visibility like what we are experiencing. The category of ILS that NAMA has is capalbe of that upgrade.”
The NAMA boss explained that collaboration with FAAN to provide perimeter fence, runway incursions, stable power supply, runway lighting system and surface markings while AON should equip its aircraft with modern facilities to align with the ground facilities was needed to achieved seamless flight operations with category three status.
The NAMA boss explained that collaboration with FAAN to provide perimeter fence, runway incursions, stable power supply, runway lighting system and surface markings while AON should equip its aircraft with modern facilities to align with the ground facilities was needed to achieved seamless flight operations with category three status.
“There are also requirements to meet the structure outside NAMA like perimeter fence, runway incursions, stable power supply, runway lighting system, surface markings that are services not directly under NAMA. Aircraft equipment to be able to fly category three and we need collaboration from airlines as well as the airport operators to be able to have the ground infrastructure for category three ILS.
“I will not say navigational aids are not working because before the dust haze, they were landing and taking off in those airports. We quite sympatise with Nigerians at this very period, we also travel and we don’t fly different aircraft and whatever effects the general public affects us.”
He explained that NAMA generates revenue as long as the aircraft are flying and interested in the airlines flying.
Anasi said NAMA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport has acquired six navigational facilities for six airports which include ILS latest versions, distance measuring equipment for six airports, Doppler VOR, Very High Omni Directional Radio Range, which guides the direction of aircraft.
This, he said, will soon be installed and will go a long way to improve navigation in most airports while more will be procured in order to be in line with reliability.
The NAMA boss said no facilities failed as a result if bad weather because the airlines have been operating into these airports before now using the same facilities but because the weather conditions have reduced beyond minimal visibility.
He noted that NAMA would have performed more than what was on ground but for the huge debt owed the agency by airlines, making it difficult for them to meet up with the provision of the facilities.
According to Anasi, the airlines were indebted to the agency to the tune of N6b and $27m dollars.
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