NAMA Improves Airspace Safety with Completion of Radar

Nnamdi_Udoh

The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has completed its aerial surveillance radar system which provides seamless transfer of pilots from one radar control to

another as the aircraft flies from its airport of departure to destination.

The  equipment provides seamless communication between the controller and the pilots from departure to the destination airport. And its completion is expected to eliminate possible hitches or delays as the pilot transits from one aerial radar controller to another.
The Managing Director of NAMA, Mr. Nnamdi Udoh, said that  the  radar  would be launched next week, explaining that  with the aerial radar, the air traffic controller would be able transfer an aircraft seamlessly to the next radar.

‘If you are taking off from Lagos, you don’t have to change your squak (code used by a pilot to communicate with the air traffic controller) to Port Harcourt, Abuja or Kano. The controller will transfer you seamlessly to the next radar and maintain the same squak to land. Prior to this, we were having procedural aerial control but now, we are going to use surveillance aerial control’, he said.
According to him,  with this addition to the existing Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON), Nigeria is strategically positioned to conquer the African airspace.

He said: ‘If you are looking at Cameroun, Togo, Niger, Chad, the Oceania, you will see that we are strategically positioned to embrace that section of the airspace. And all we need is to have some kind of wide aerial multi-lateration system to link up the other countries. All we need is one system and a switch and all the systems in Africa will talk to one another. You don’t really have to physically see the infrastructure. It’s like roaming a phone. Something is there that is making you connect anywhere you go. It is doable. It can be achieved overtime. The major thing is the political will.  Africa is a big airspace. The African Union, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and other relevant bodies should be involved.”

The NAMA boss  said that it was because of the tremendous achievement of the agency and its invaluable contribution to the safety of the nation’s airspace that attracted many awards  it.
He said that between January and September, the agency  won four different awards including the gold award given to NAMA and individual award given to the  managing director  at the 18th Conference of Aviation & Allied Business Leadership in Windhoek, Namibia recently.