The Nigerian Airspace Management (NAMA) on Thursday said all its communication, navigation, surveillance and air traffic management equipment were working at optimal levels.
The Managing Director, NAMA, Capt. Good Akinkuotu, gave the assurance in Lagos at the quarterly Business Breakfast Meeting (BMM) organised by the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme was: “Safety Challenges in Air Navigation and Air Traffic Service Delivery in Nigeria”.
Akinkuotu, represented by the Director of Operations, NAMA, Mr Lawrence Pwajok, assured air travellers of their safety within the nation’s airspace.
He, however, said the agency had completed installations of new Solar Runway Lighting Systems at the Lagos and Port Harcourt International Airports.
According to him, the installations will further enhance safety of flight operations at all times and in all weather conditions.
The NAMA chief restated that the agency operated the highest standards in air traffic management in realising its vision of becoming one of the leading air navigation service providers in the world.
Akinkuotu said that the Federal Government recently approved fund for the deployment of multilateration surveillance system for helicopter operations in the Niger Delta area.
He said deployment of the new surveillance system by the federal government would improve security and air safety in the area.
“We have the federal government approval for the multilateration which will be deployed for the monitoring of low level helicopter in the Niger Delta areas.
“It is the responsibility of NAMA to deploy an air navigational system technological designed to capture low flying helicopters to ensure adequate safety in the airspace.
“The project is ongoing and we are expecting to have those transmitters in about 40 locations and it has been decentralised to cover Area 1, Area 2 and 3 covering the Niger-Delta Area,” he said.
Akinkuotu said the purpose for the transmitter was to monitor the low level flying aircraft since the high airspace had already been covered by RADAR.
He noted that the surveillance transmitter was basically to cover helicopter operations in the airspace.
Akinkuotu said the agency was also planning to acquire the use of Drone that would be used for aircraft surveillance, pipelines monitoring and environmental monitoring in the Niger Delta area.
Multilateration is a navigation and surveillance technique based on the measurement of the times of arrival (TOAs) of energy waves (radio, acoustic and seismic among others) having a known propagation speed.
