Director General of Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (DG-CAA)
The Director-General of Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Capt. Musa Nuhu has said that the new civil aviation regulation that stipulates a minimum of six aircraft for start-up airlines was the ensure operational efficiency of the airlines ending the issues of flight delays and cancellations.
Speaking during in a virtual meeting with aviation correspondents on Thursday night, Nuhu said, “If you have three aircraft for instance and you lose one out of it, it has become a problem to meet up with your operations. Then, you start to have issues with flight delays, cancellations, and all that. The number of aircraft you will have will depend on the kind of operations you want to do.
“You can imagine somebody who comes in with just one or two aircraft and one of the aircraft goes out of business, and sell tickets to the passengers, think of what will happen. For you to have six aircraft, it shows you have very strong financial backgrounds of running an airline.”
The NCAA boss who however said that the requirement of minimum of six airplanes is not limited to new entrants alone, stressed that the old operators too have a period by which they have to meet up.
According to him, “If everybody has one or two aircraft, we will keep having this recurrent problem. We have to avoid that. People will criticize, but every country is different. We have to look at our own peculiar history and try and come up with solutions, but regulations are not cast in stone. If the situation changes, the regulation would be reviewed accordingly. Whenever it is necessary, we don’t have to wait for five years before we make amendments.”
The Chief Executive of aviation regulatory agency in Nigeria added that the CAA is in the process of being institutionalise; a CAA where the standard across the board is maintained.
Meawhile the Chief regulator has frown at the manner with which some industry stakeholders who ought to know better, reacted to the crash of a light aircraft which happened in Ikeja, Lagos State on Tuesday. He regretted that it was very unfortunate people were already jumping at their own conclusions on the causes of the accident even when the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) was still investigating the crash
He said the plot by some to rubbish the achievements of the Director of Airworthiness of NCAA, Engr Gbolahan Abatan by people who should know better was unfortunate.
“Engr. Gbolahan Abatan has done a great job for us since he came on board. Before he took over the NCAA job, he was doing well as a private entrepreneur and in line with the civil service rules, he resigned properly from Air First Hospitality and Tours. The aircraft in question doesn’t belong to him, but he managed it. I think we should not demonise him for whatever reason.”
Speaking on some notable achievements in the sector, Nuhu disclosed that Nigeeria has more aircraft in her registry than the entire West African states including their number of airlines, Airline Operator Certificate (AOC), airports, and companies.
“From records, about 12 years ago, we had only 16 AOCs, right now, we have 32, out of which 12 are scheduled operators. We cannot keep operating the way we are operating. Changes have to come in and we have started the process; we are acquiring regulatory software in the next one or two weeks. We are going to be ready with the software and training of our staff is going to start on the use of the software. It is a three-year programme and at the end of the period, we are going to make sure that 80 to 90 percent of NCAA processes are automated and also the third party is going to be automated.”
He further stated that the new process is a major paradigm shift from paper-based work to automation, adding that they would run into trouble if they don’t do the proper homework.
“You might run into more crises. We are working with a company to ensure we have this. Automation exposes you to cyber risk and so we have developed a manual that enhances cyber security.
Our technical library, we have made it e-library and with this, any staff of NCAA can log into the library and get the same information wherever he is. All these are geared towards having a quality agency across the board. What all these done is that it reduces the stress for our staff and reduces the paperwork.”
