Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, has said that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is 90 per cent ready to reopen the aviation industry for domestic flights.
The minister spoke in Lagos on Saturday during the dry test run flight by an Aero Contractors plane from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja to the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.
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According to the minster, the test run is to determine the readiness of the airline for resumption of domestic flight operations.
Nigeria shut its airports four months ago following the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country. The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 had earlier announced that some domestic flights would resume on June 21, but shifted the resumption without giving any exact day for a reopening.
However, the minister said the purpose of the test run is to ensure that aircraft are airworthy. “We must make sure the aircraft are airworthy and certified fit to fly. We will ensure that every single pilot and aircrew have done their proficiency test,” he said.
He added, “All of these procedures are recommended practices and we are almost ready to begin. At least about 90 per cent in that aspect,” he said.
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According to the minister, passengers for domestic and international flights will now arrive three and five hours respectively before boarding as part of measures to fight the pandemic. He said efforts would be made to ensure that aircraft accommodate everyone without creating additional burdens for passengers.
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The minister explained that there will be zero contact with the person screening passengers, even as he added that the seats in the departure hall had been reduced from 500 or 700 to 200 or 250.
He noted that airlines had been granted the permission to carry out a dry run of flights across the country to ensure the airworthiness of their planes.
The aviation minister said that passengers aside from presenting their mode of identification will remove their masks for five seconds for the security operatives to confirm that they are truly the person to fly before they will be allowed into the airport.
“Nobody not permitted to travel will access the airport, adding that the new airport security operatives have been trained to handle will ensure compliance with the help of K9,” he said.
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The team’s national coordinator, Sani Aliyu, said the aviation industry had three weeks to develop a protocol for the proposed resumption.
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