To ensure safety in Nigerian airspace during and beyond yuletide, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has commenced a routine calibration of navigational facilities in 24 airports across the country.
The calibration exercise expected to be completed within the next two weeks is targeted at putting all navigational aids in optimal capacity would ensure that the facilities generate precise and accurate signals to guarantee the safety of air navigation in the country. Also to be calibrated and commissioned are the newly installed ILS/DME facilities in Lagos and Port Harcourt airports.
A statement by the management of the nation’s airspace management agency therefore reassure the flying public of the safety of the nation’s airspace as all necessary measures are in place to ensure safe, efficient and seamless flight operations in Nigeria
Meanwhile NAMA has denied a news report which claimed that flight disruption looms as a result of near obsolete state of its navigational facilities.
In a statement which read in part, NAMA said “The attention of the Nigerian airspace Management agency (NAMA) has been drawn to a newspaper publication with the title ‘Flight Disruption Looms over Obsolete Navigational equipment’ wherein the author attributed alleged imminent massive flight delays and cancellations” during the yuletide to “near obsolete navigational facilities at airports nationwide. He goes further to allege that NAMA has done nothing significant in the last 12 months in the area of equipment upgrade”.
Describing the allegation as erroneous and misleading, capable of sending the wrong signals to our teeming airspace users as well as the flying public, NAMA claimed that ongoing efforts by the agency in the area of infrastructure upgrade across major airports in Nigeria is far from what was reported.
Reeling out what the agency has done in the last 18 months to ensure that its facilities are in order, the agency claimed it has embarked on an aggressive upgrade of navigational infrastructure in strategic airports in the country. For instance, it claimed that Cat II Instrument Landing Systems /Distance Measuring Equipment (ILS/DME) have been installed in Kaduna, Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt airports. It added that installation of Doppler Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range (DVOR) is ongoing at Maiduguri airport while that of ILS/DME is also in progress at Benin airport. Upgrade of facilities in other airports is to follow soon.
“Meanwhile, work has reached an advanced stage on the installation of Cat III ILS in Lagos and Abuja. Already, a team of NAMA engineers are currently undergoing Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) of the CAT III equipment in the United States of America in preparation for its takeoff by January 2019,” NAMA insisted.
