The Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA,
Mr. Tayib Odunowo, has disclosed that the agency has recruited 100 Air Traffic Controllers, ATC’s who have started training.
Speaking in an interview on the sidelines of the 27th annual League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents, LAAC, Conference at Providence Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, with the theme: Aviation Industry, changing times changing strategies, Odunowo stated that the challenge NAMA is having now is space constraint in the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, NCAT, Zaria.
He stated further that NAMA has an MOU with the Rector of NCAT which will make them do a hybrid training.
Odunowo said NAMA has brought some Air Traffic Controllers back right now that are actually retired because of the years in service and not age, adding that these are people who still have a lot of fire power in them.
NAMA boss noted that right now, they are working with the military who also has a school where they train controllers.
According to him, “the Military had expressed interest in helping us. And then lastly, we are bringing in an organisation to train our controllers to get all their classes of licenses in six months. So, we have a four-point approach that we are working on to quickly close the gap”.
Commenting on the
issues of communication in the Nigerian aviation industry and what NAMA is doing to address this challenge, Odunowo disclosed that the agency has
started the power audit to address some of the challenges.
He said: “You know when you want to diagnose a problem, you have to look at the symptoms before administering a drug. So, pretty much has been done in-house. We put a committee together made up of engineering, people that own communication and operations, which are the user department. So they have identified key things, key deliverables that we have started working on in order to close that gap.
One of them is power. So, immediately we rolled up solar powered transmitters. What does that do? That bridges the gap for our communications.
The second one we have deployed manpower. The communication issue we have basically is in our upper airspace. So, the third one is that we are doing what is called an Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) automation process, which is the backbone of everything we are talking about.
Everything that we are talking about now is going to ride on AIS automation and that process is ongoing currently. The contractor has promised that all the five international airports will be operational. So, once we do that as phase one, then by the time we move to phase two and our communication issues will be history”.
On where exactly is the country is in the multilateration project, Odunowo said the project is 90 percent completed.
“It is basically concentrated more in the Delta. That region is the busiest airspace right now in Nigeria. If you look at the proximity of all the airports, you have all these low flying objects. What NAMA is trying to do is to make sure that anything that flies in the Delta region is picked by the Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS). But right now, we intend to deploy Multilateration Technology (MLAT) all over Nigeria, starting from the Delta region. Don’t forget even in foreign countries MLAT kind of superimposes your regular radar. So, they actually work hand-in-hand”, he explained.
On SBAS programme and how people have keyed in and how has it helped NAMA to actually reduce most of the challenges that they have been having with regards to saving fuel on distance time, NAMA boss explained further that “what SBAS does is that it brings your Ground Based Software (GBS), let assume GBS has a zero, or the tolerance limit of Global Positioning System (GPS), let’s assume it is one foot. When you use SBAS, it brings it down to like two inches. That is really what SBAS does. So, it is a no brainer especially when we are talking about bad weather.
We are talking of harmattan, we are talking about rain, SBAS is a must. Don’t forget we still have challenges with some of our navigational aids. So, it is like a backup for them. All the airlines love it; it saves them money, fuel, and they can fly freely.”
