Many airlines unprepared for resuming operations - NCAA

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has declared that many airlines are not ready to restart operations despite approval by the federal government that flights should resume from yesterday.

“The NCAA has reviewed the status of all airline operators’ preparation for the airline industry restart and discovered that several airlines are still lagging in submitting the safety risk assessment,” DirectorGeneral of the NCAA, Capt. Musa Nuhu said.

This was contained in a memo NCAA/DG/AIR/11/16/130 dated June 30 addressed to all aviation stakeholders where the regulatory agency also extended the validity of airlines’ personnel licenses and/ratings for another one month up to 31st July 2020.

He said the extension of the validity was to enable airlines to comply “with the conditions and limitations of the exemptions and give ample time to NCAA to process the renewal of such licenses.”

The authority had on April 1st issued All Operators Letter (AOL) D008/20 reference number NCAA/DG/AIR/11/16/111 to permit all holders of NCAA issued personnel licenses to continue to exercise the privileges of their licenses and/ratings till 30th June 2020.

According to the DG, the exemptions recently granted airlines on the personnel license “require certain Safety Risk Assessments to be conducted by all operators and submitted to the NCAA prior to their benefitting from the exemptions.”

However, operators disagreed with the position of the DG, insisting they are ready to restart operations.

Daily Trust however learnt that there would be a stakeholders’ meeting tomorrow where a final decision would be made on when airlines can resume operations.

A spokesperson of Dana Air, Mr. Kingsley Ezenwa said airlines were ready to resume flights and assured that any gap NCAA wants the airlines to fill would be promptly sorted out.