NAMA Tasks Airlines, ATCOs, Others on Incident Reporting

Chinedu Eze

The acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Matthew Pwajok, has urged pilots, air traffic controllers, airlines, ground handlers, passengers and other stakeholders in the aviation industry to continue to report aviation incidents to the safety authorities.

He said incident reports would further enhance the relative safety in the industry and also boost confidence in air travel.

Pwajok, who was an award recipient at the Association of Foreign Airlines and Representatives in Nigeria (AFARN) safety summit and awards, which held in Lagos recently, contended that investing in sensitisation of key stakeholders in the area of safety reporting is as important as investing in safety critical equipment and manpower training. He stressed that incident reports were critical and strategic aspect of the aviation safety chain, because, “if you don’t report incidents we can’t control them, if we don’t have reports we cannot provide the required risk analysis and mitigations.”

He commended pilots “for being very faithful in incident reporting, even to the detriment of the airlines, as this could sometimes cause slight flight delays while awaiting a review or investigation of the incident by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) before releasing the aircraft back for operations.

The agency said when these incidents are reported by pilots to ATC, they are immediately relayed toNCAA for investigation, and when the reported event or defect is mitigated, the aircraft is released back to service.

“For instance, we had an occurrence at Escravos yesterday that was reported to the control tower by the pilot, and consequently NAMA informed AIB (Accident Investigation Bureau) and NCAA, and after the required mitigations were effected, the aircraft was released back to service. It is as prompt as that! These are the kind of 24/7 collaboration, cooperation, and coordination that have largely enhanced safety in the sector,” Pwajok said.

The NAMA boss expressed appreciation to stakeholders in the industry for the enhanced safety in the sector, which he attributed to the effective synergy amongst stakeholders and strategic efforts by service providers. The NAMA boss also observed that the relative safety enjoyed in the sector over the last 10 years was not by chance or luck but as a result of significant investments both in infrastructural deployment and human capital development to enhance safety in the Nigerian airspace, thereby ensuring that major air disasters such as those witnessed between 2005 and 2006 were a thing of the past.