Musa Nuhu, director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation
Authority (NCAA), says the June 21 date for resumption of domestic flights is
not feasible.
Answering questions on Thursday during the daily briefing of
the presidential task force on COVID-19, Nuhu said the agency will not approve
the resumption of flight operations until it gets confirmation that operations
can be carried out in a safe and organised manner.
“We never said aviation is going to start definitely on the
21st, we were supposed to put a report back based on what we have and we have
some work to do. As such, June 21 is not a feasible date to resume operations,”
he said.
The DG explained that there is a ton of work to be done
before operations can resume in the aviation sector.
“Prior to this mandate from the presidential task force, the
regulatory body, NCAA had developed advisory circulars distributed to the
different sectors of the industry,” he explained.
“These circulars required all sectors of industry to present
a restart plan to the regulatory body for approval.
“A lot of service providers have provided their restart
plans and these restart plans are to be reviewed by the civil aviation
authority.
“When we review those documents, if we are happy with those
documents then we will go to each individual organisation to verify what they
have given as their restart plan.
“Some provided inadequate documents and their documents were
sent back to them.
“Significant progress has been made but there is still a lot
of work to be done. The aviation system is a very complex system and this
system has been compounded with the public health care concept which a lot of
them, the aviation system is not used to implementing.”
Nuhu said the agency and all stakeholders in the sector had
a statutory duty to make sure that operations are safe and secure.
He said the agency will not be pressured to approve
resumption adding that resumption without the appropriate checks would be
disastrous.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
FG never said flight will resume June 21st 2020.
ReplyDeleteAirline operators were only advised to start putting together protocol or process to be reviewed from June 21st.