Solving Nigeria’s airspace challenges
THE state of Nigerian airspace infrastructure has raised a lot of concerns among aviation stakeholders. It wasn’t as if the country’s airspace was not safe, so many issues like inadequate navigation equipment, and poor radio communication among others raise concerns about how difficult pilots communicate with air traffic controllers.
For several years, most of the navigational facilities were not only obsolete but grossly inadequate and posed serious dangers to air travel. Pilots expressed displeasure and were visibly angry over poor navaids at most of the airports. Aerodromes suffered from long periods of neglect, poor planning, and wanton corruption that left the sector in a precarious situation. Pilots recalled their experiences any time they flew within the country’s airspace. They found it very difficult at a point to establish communication with the control tower because of the lack of effective radio communication coverage. The poor state of the controller/ pilot VHF communication coverage of the country’s airspace was glaring. Users were piqued that if navigational aids could work in such places as Togo, Ghana, and Sao Tome, they wondered why the same equipment couldn’t work in Nigeria.
The careful planning by the Ministry of Aviation and NAMA to change the narrative of bad news as it affects the country’s airspace safety had seen a massive investment of over N32 billion and another $ 12.9 million to overhaul the airspace architecture by the last administration. While so much was achieved, there are so many investments NAMA is expected to carry out to reposition Nigeria’s airspace infrastructure and make it safer.
While NAMA took note of the complaints of the umbrella body of air traffic controllers, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association ( NATCA), itemised the several ongoing and completed projects across the country’s airports aimed at safety, efficiency, capacity, and environment.
There were surface movement radar and ground control systems at Lagos and Abuja completed in the first quarter of 2022. The deployment of three- dimensional virtual tower simulators in Lagos was completed by December 2021.
The process of tackling the rot in NAMA of many years started slowly about a few years ago.
The remarkable work of past Chief Executive Officers particularly, Capt Fola Akinkuotu and Mr. Mathew Lawrence Pwajok is worth mentioning. At NAMA, the agency made some strides. In the area of communication, the agency had a few challenges. Over time the airspace is increasing because of growth in traffic and the air routes are many and they cut across the nation because there are more connections between various airports, as new airports are coming up.
In response to this, NAMA is deploying a very high- frequency system to enhance extended coverage communication, from bandwidth to bandwidth to enhance the safety of air navigation. That is the project that will enhance communication between pilots and air traffic controllers, which is voice communication and air- to- ground.
For exchange of flight, an aircraft departs and there is the need to inform the airport where the aircraft is going for them to also prepare and expect the aircraft.
There are more digital means of sending this information, which are referred to as data links, that is what the agency is working on to get funding to be able to provide not just voice communication but also data links that can provide an accurate and more express exchange of sensitive information and flight movements.
The incumbent NAMA MD, Alhaji Umar Ahmed Farouk has carried on seamlessly and breaking new ground with the planned provision of modern and seamless navigation safety tools. All the hiccups are expected to be tackled as the Federal Government has acceded to the request of the agency to overhaul and modernise the communication architecture of the country’s airspace.
The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, some weeks ago announced that he had received approval of N40 billion to procure and upgrade navigational equipment nationwide.
He stated the facilities led him to request urgent intervention from the President to acquire safety critical equipment.
The newly appointed managing director of NAMA, Farouk has decided to take pre- emptive preemptive steps to upgrade most of the equipment.
Farouk, who had been the most senior director in the agency before he was appointed substantive Managing Director has been working tirelessly to re- position NAMA to meet global standards.
The Minister, Farouk and his team are working to upgrade our Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria ( TRACON) after Keyamo visited France, the country of the installer of TRACON.
Aside from that, the Federal Government is also procuring landing equipment, and navigation equipment and upgrading the ones in existence including the procurement of modern ILS for the five international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port- Harcourt and Enugu.
There is also the Doppler Very High Omni- directional Range ( DVOR) equipment that guides aircraft in very difficult circumstances. Even in hazy weather, they guide aircraft in their approach and landing.
The government is equally in the process of acquiring those equipment as a country to upgrade it including Distance Measuring Equipment ( DMES).
The agency has been grappling with the Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria ( TRACON) coupled with intractable communication challenges in Nigeria’s airspace which became inefficient over the years because some of the parts had become outmoded.
Farouk has vowed that the myriads of problems plaguing communication between pilots and controllers would soon be a thing of the past.
He promised to immediately fix the communication problem and also declared an emergency in power supply, as NAMA’S installations are expected to provide 24- hour service to ensure that aircraft flew safely in Nigeria’s airspace.
The airspace agency has spent a humongous amount of its revenues on diesel to power its generators and recently considered investing in solar systems.
The communication architecture of Nigerian airspace is now broadened, addressing issues that were prevalent before as there are processes to ensure seamless communication between pilots and air traffic controllers.
Over time navigation has always relied on ground- based navigational aids. However, with the advent of satellite navigation adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation ( ICAO) GNSS, the scenario began to change.
Due to errors inherent in the GPS constellations, the raw navigation signal from the satellites was not accurate enough to provide precision approaches. The satellite errors were due to various factors, including SA ( selective availability) which was a deliberate introduction of errors to downgrade the quality of signals.
However, with the removal of the SA errors, there was a significant improvement in the accuracy of the satellite guidance signals.
This nonetheless, could not meet the requirements for precision approaches. To further improve the accuracies of the navigational satellite signals several measures were adopted, such as Satellite Based Augmentation Systems ( SBAS) and Ground Based Augmentation Systems ( GBAS), which are ways of detecting and correcting satellite errors by comparison of received satellite signals from a known reference point and computing the errors.
Speaking on the application of SBAS for approach navigation in Nigeria, Farouk noted that the use of satellites for navigation ( GNSS) is not new in Nigeria as they have implemented RNAV approaches using satellite signals.
However, these approaches he said are non- precision approaches as the accuracies do not meet up to precision categories, hinting that the RNAV provides only lateral guidance with no vertical guidance signals. It then still means that the ground- based navigational aids provide better accuracies.
The country’s ground- based instrument landing systems provide navigation guidance from Category I to Category III approaches, which means airport or traffic capacities are still better with the existing ground- based instrument landing system during bad weather.
However, the cost of acquisition and maintenance of ground- based navigational aids is high and therefore, alternative means of navigation that are cost- effective is a welcome development. The traditional ground- based instrument landing systems have been the sole means of instrument approaches before now. It is expected that the SBAS ( LPV) when implemented will be available for use in addition to the existing groundbased navigational aids and the already applicable RNAV. The choice of which to use will be at the discretion of the airspace users.
While there is a remarkable improvement in air traffic management in the country with installed facilities, however, the agency is urged not to rest on its oars to ensure that there is consistent improvement in the country’s airspace surveillance.