The aviation industry was understandably one of the most adversely affected following the global lockdown triggered by COVID-19 pandemic. It was a challenge that shoved the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority into unchartered space. Amazingly, a year after the lockdown, the industry in Nigeria is firmly back to business. reports
The major challenge that the air transport industry faced as the COVID-19 lockdown eased globally was how to ensure that aircraft resumed operations in good and safe condition. During the lockdown, virtually all commercial planes were grounded and put in storage, as the industry regulators, especially the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) kept a close watch on developments.
Before resumption of flights, airlines were required to observe COVID-19 protocols, train their staff and they had to be certified by the NCAA. In taking aircraft out of storage and putting them back to operation, the airlines and the regulatory authority had to work together to meet the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) novel safety protocols.
But the major challenge airlines faced globally, but acutely in Nigeria, was how to ensure that aircraft were airworthy. By the time the lockdown was lifted by the federal government, many of the aircraft that were in storage were due for C-check. Even before the lockdown, a lot of them had been ferried overseas for maintenance. Unfortunately, major aircraft maintenance facilities overseas were not in operation due to the lockdown. By the time Nigeria suspended its lockdown, quite a number of countries were still on lockdown, a development that stalled prompt resumption of operations.
It was a particularly acute challenge for Nigeria because the country lacked major local maintenance facilities where aircraft could be serviced. So, most of the aircraft due for maintenance were either left in maintenance facilities abroad, with huge costs to the airlines, or they were left at the airports in Nigeria as AOG (aircraft on ground).
With so many aircraft not flying, Nigerian airlines operated below capacity, even with skyrocketing airfares and schedule hiccups. NCAA had to work very hard to ensure that the airlines did not derail from the rules, as air safety is very sensitive and there could be temptations to cut corners in response to the challenge. What happened to one airline that was later suspended from operation indicated that the regulatory authority was effectively keeping tabs on the carriers.
But after over a year, Nigerian airlines seem to have come out of that setback and are now recording growth as evidenced by comparative indices and confirmed by the regulatory authority.
COVID-19 Effect
Recently the Director General of NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu, gave an update on what the agency had been doing following the lifting of the lockdown. He acknowledged that the COVID-19 had affected the air travel industry, and gladly the industry is steadily returning to the path of growth after the lockdown. Aided by insecurity that makes land travel unattractive, Nuhu said there is a boon in air travel right now.
“COVID-19 has really changed our industry significantly in all manners which is not peculiar to Nigeria, it is a global thing. And also right here in Nigeria the industry is growing, we have more airlines coming up and even the existing airlines are expanding their operations, frequency, ordering more aircraft, doing all sorts of connection. The connectivity of the country has improved significantly and it is going to get much better.
“You can almost travel from any part of the country to any other part of the country; we are almost at that point. This is reminiscent of the days of Nigeria Airways where you can go from anywhere to anywhere, even now it is even getting better. I can travel from Asaba to Kano; it never used to happen. You can travel from Port Harcourt to Kano, I can travel from almost anywhere to Sokoto, to Bauchi, Gombe, it is really amazing,” he said.
The Director General said more airports are being built, as states have embarked on the establishment of new airports to deepen air connectivity.
“We have airports; a lot of state governments are building new airports. We have airports popping up all over the places, so that has increased the span of activities and responsibility on NCAA as the regulator of the industry. Our surveillance programme has increased. It is putting a lot of demands on us. And workload has significantly increased and it is just going to get worse as time goes and that has put a lot of stress on us,” Nuhu said.
Manpower Challenge
Nuhu said that attracting technical staff and retaining them is a big challenge NCAA has because of the relatively poor remuneration, noting that in the aviation environment, the agencies may have the lowest salary scale for professionals in the industry.
“The issue of our technical staff is one of the biggest challenges we have. To attract the appropriate staff, train them and retain them, it is a bit difficult. Like flight operations inspectors, these are airline pilots we are attracting. Nobody is going to leave his job with airline X and come and earn maybe 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the salary he is earning with airline.
“At the end of the day we go for retired pilots to come and do the job for us. But I think we need to have a mixture of the young inspectors and the retired inspectors. We need to have the right mixture but it is a very difficult call for us to really attract the young guys. Because we cannot compete what the industry is paying. And also on the issue of airworthiness inspectors, we have them fresh from school, we train them, they come and work for eight years, and get all the training, they get all the experience and the next thing they tell you bye-bye. This is because somebody is doubling or tripling their salary and you can’t deny them going.
“It is a very difficult situation we find ourselves in. We have been talking to the Ministry and we have gotten approval to see how we can review these conditions of service, subject to the approval of the appropriate government agencies. This is to enable us attract and retain the core technical personnel that does the work of NCAA. NCAA is a technical organisation; our core function is technical and we need the right personnel, properly trained and in adequate numbers. We are working on that. We hope some time soon, we will be able to get a handle on it because it is one of our biggest challenges right now,” the Director General said.
Oversight Functions and Training
Nuhu said that the agency wants to automate its systems to make the work easier for the agency in order to easily tackle its problems. This would also relief the inspectors so that they would spend more time on the field to carry out oversight functions.
“Not only will it make our work much, more effective, and much more efficient, we will be able to cope in a better way with growth in the industry as the workload will reduce on the inspectors, the paper work and all that and hopefully they will be able to do more of the oversight function and the surveillance functions too. This is to ensure they deal with all the airports, all the airlines, all the ground handlers, all the caterers, the air navigation service providers, the state airports, the federal airports and everybody in between. We hope if we finally get all the approvals, hopefully before the end of this year we hope to start the procurement process. Hopefully by the end of this year or first quarter of next, we will start implementation.
He aid that there are mandatory training courses, which the technical official of the agency must undertake in order to meet ICAO expectations and certification. The Director General explained that with the scarcity of foreign exchange and also the high cost of the training overseas, NCAA decided to domesticate some of the training programmes to make it easy for the agency, especially at this period of COVID-19 where each country has its own protocol, which sometimes could be a hindrance to travelling to some destinations.
“On the issue of training, our inspectors have five core mandatory trainings. Because of the COVID-19 people are not able to travel out to go do training because of restrictions. What we have done is that we have domesticated the training. We started November last year and for the current batch it is going to run through first quarter of next year. And during this process about 500 courses are going to be run. Some inspectors will do three, four, five of the courses. Because it is five mandatory courses, so we want to make sure all our current inspectors are fully qualified. Some are doing refresher courses and we are going to do this training in about 18 months.
“In the past, people used to be sent out. You cannot send out more than 50 or 60 persons because of the expenses and you can’t send all your people out and ground the system. So, based on the system in the past it would have taken us eight years or 10 years to do these trainings we are doing in 18 months. These trainings are being done by ICAO certified instructors. Anyway, it is strange; we met the system where ICAO calls on Nigeria and requests for our instructors in certain areas to send to another country to go train them. Then we are sending our people out to go and train somewhere. So we decided that we would use what we have in-house to get what we want. What this does, apart from expediting the training and shrinking the time period, it also saves us significant amount of money and foreign training fees, allowances for the staff going on training and fight tickets,” Nuhu disclosed.
NCAA Regional offices
The Director General said that in order to make it easy and reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks, NCAA has embarked on the establishment of regional offices so that certain duties could be done at the regional level instead of coming to the headquarters of the agency. This, he noted, would make it easier for the agency to effectively attend to the needs of the airlines and others.
“Another of our programme is the establishment of regional offices. NCAA has regional offices right now and we are repositioning the regional offices, we are going to equip them properly in terms of manpower in all the areas, in terms of appropriate office spaces, tools and equipment to do their job, so we get them closer to the airlines.
“For example, if you are in Port Harcourt, you don’t have to come to Lagos or Abuja to put in any application, you can start from the regional office in Port Harcourt. You can deal with the people there up to a certain level, then they can inform the headquarters. “It brings us much closer to our stakeholders and also gives us much effective way to do our surveillance of the operators with the regional offices. And we are looking at adding a couple of more regional offices depending on the resources available to us. Whatever we do has to be appropriated by the National Assembly, so we are looking at that and we will put in the budget and ensure it will be approved,” he said.
Without a doubt, COVID-19 has ushered in a new normal in air travel, and given both the regulatory authorities and airlines a reason to improvise and innovate. Like most stakeholder admit, the COVID-19 protocol in air travel was a guided innovation that was inevitable.
source: thisday
