By Chinelo Obogo
The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), has said that it has intensified effort to ensure the Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) automation is operational in five international airports.
NAMA’s Managing Director, Tayyib Odunowo, who stated this in an interview during the 27th conference of Leave of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) held in Lagos, recently, also disclosed that solar powered transmitters have been deployed to close the gap in air communication.
Odunowo stated that communication issues will eventually become history after a second phase of work that will complement ongoing efforts.
“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 5 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,” he said.
Speaking on shortage of Air Traffic Controllers, he said NAMA is working on a four-point approach to quickly close the gap.
He disclosed that NAMA recently recruited 100 controllers and have started training at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) in Zaria.
“We have brought some people back right now because they still have a lot of fire power in them. Secondly, we have recruited 100 controllers and we have started training. The challenge we are having is space constraint in NCAT. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Rector of NCAT on that issue and they are going to do a hybrid to resolve it.
“Right now, we are working with the military. The military also has a school where they train controllers. They expressed interest in helping us and 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,” he added.
He also revealed the intention of government to deploy Multilateration Technology (MLAT) all over Nigeria, starting from the Delta region. Odunowo said: “It is 90% 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). Don’t forget even in foreign countries MLAT kind of superimposes your regular radar. So, they actually work hand-in-hand.”