Economic activities in Benin City, the Edo State capital, may soon get a boost following the commissioning of Category II Instrument Landing System (ILS) at the Benin airport recently installed by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA).
Fola Akinkuotu, managing director of NAMA, said this was in line with an earlier pledge by the agency to upgrade navigational infrastructure in strategic airports across the country in a bid to boost socio-economic activities in such areas.
Akinkuotu, who spoke at a town hall meeting with staff at the agency’s headquarters annex in Ikeja, Lagos, announced that the agency has equally installed and commissioned the ILS at Port Harcourt airport which was damaged by an aircraft last year, saying the flight commissioning which was handled by Omni-Blue Aviation Ltd indicated that the newly installed landing aids were operating at optimal capacity.
Poor instrumentation at Nigeria’s airports has been a big issue for the industry over the years. Of the country’s 26 airports, only five – Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Kano and Port Harcourt – had navigational aids as at 2017. This meant that these five were the only airports where aircraft could fly in and out at night.
Similarly, most of Nigeria’s airports operated with CAT I certification. As such, flights were unable to land or take off at the airports with visibility below 800 metres.
Local airlines are estimated to be losing about 50 percent of flight operations due to poor visibility occasioned by the seasonal harmattan haze.
Last year, NAMA equipped 14 airports across the country with Category II instrument landing systems costing over $6 million, aimed to aid airlines to take off and land at low visibility. Some of the equipment include Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), a navigation beacon usually coupled to enable aircraft to measure their position relative to that beacon, and VHF omnidirectional range (VOR).
Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Ilorin, Gombe, Owerri, Sokoto, Uyo, Yola, Dutse, Calabar and Enugu airports already have ILS Cat II Approach and Landing Minima. The commissioning of Category II Instrument Landing System (ILS) at Benin airport means that Benin now joins the ranks of other airports already enjoying the benefits.
Sam Adurogboye, general manager, public relations at Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), said the implementation of these revised aerodrome operating minima (both takeoff and landing) would be based on compliance with applicable Standard Operating Procedures for Low Visibility Operations at the affected airports executed by flight crew, air traffic controllers (ATC), aerodrome operators and the meteorological agency.
To ensure the seamless operation of these revised minima, Adurogboye said the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) would continue to ensure prompt and regular provision of required meteorological information, including flight visibility and Runway Visual Range (RVR) values to all ATC units in the airports. As such, NiMET and NAMA would ensure constant updating of the automatic
He also hinted that in the same vein, installation of CAT II ILS would commence at Maiduguri, Jos and Minna airports in the northern parts of the country.
