by Stanley Azuakola

Nigeria’s aviation woes are very well documented. Minus the crashes and the near misses, there are also tarmac challenges due to poor infrastructure, maintenance issues, and high cost of aviation fuel. Apparently, that’s not all.

A Guardian report today reveals that many times, airplanes enter the Nigerian airspace and air traffic controllers are not even aware. A few times when we are lucky, often when the airplane is arriving from a friendly nation, air traffic controllers are only informed via ordinary phone calls.

The cause of this anomaly is reportedly because communications gadgets (visual and voice) in the nation’s airspace are in a deplorable condition. As a result, pilots and air traffic controllers can hardly communicate with each other.

Workers’ unions and aviation agencies repeatedly sent letters to Nigeria’s Aviation minister, Stella Oduah-Ogiemwonyi intimating her on the situation but her response was zilch.

One of such letters by the Air traffic controllers and the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) on July 18, 2012 said: “It is worrisome that the nation’s airspace is increasingly but gradually being avoided by the international over flyers due to poor communications between air traffic controllers and pilots.”

The document signed by the NUATE president, D. M. Safiyanu, which was received by the minister on July 20, 2012, stated that the provision of Controller-Pilot-Data-Link Communication (CPDLC) would have been a remedy to this “unfortunate situation,” regretting that, “all our neighbouring airspaces have such facilities’’.

According to him, “There are several cases where aircraft enter into Nigerian airspace unnoticed until neighbouring airspace notifies us through telephone, for example, Ndjamena, Chad. As a matter of fact, air traffic controllers on duty are facing operational hazards daily as they sometimes watch helplessly whenever aircraft are near collision and cannot provide air traffic control due to inability to communicate.’’

He said for the minister to get a clearer picture of the deplorable condition of the country’s airspace, she should contact IATA, the clearing-house for global airlines and call all the air traffic control closed logbooks for Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and Abuja from January 2012.

“The pilots of the presidential fleet can attest to these communication problems. Urgent remedies to these problems are very necessary because of its negative impact on safety, revenue, and national security. Generally, history has shown that chief executives in the past misled former ministers, because they will never expose their deficiencies for you to help. We shall never allow that to happen again if you desire to hear regularly from workers who are the direct operators or end users of all aviation and airport facilities,” he said.

The airspace manager of NAMA, J. I. Ekweonwa, and the deputy general manager for NAMA, Okwor .I., had also written separate letters to the minister on the matter.

Foreign nations and airlines, wary of how defensive Nigerian authorities can be when confronted with facts about the sorry state of infrastructure in the country, have refrained from openly declaring Nigeria’s airspace as unsafe for them to overfly. They have decided instead to refrain from using Nigeria’s airspace altogether.

Even in cases where using Nigeria’s airspace to get to their destinations is shorter, the foreign airlines instead prefer to use longer routes. About 10 airlines are already doing this.

According to The Guardian report:

For instance, Air France no longer flies through the Nigeria’s airspace as Air France 889 goes from Kinshasa to Paris, Air France 995 from Johannesburg to Paris, Air France 900 from Yaoundé to Paris, Air France 928 from Luanda to Paris, Air France 896 from Brazzzaville to Paris.

The same goes for British Airways as its flight 55K goes from London to Johannesburg, Air Namibia 286 from Frankfurt to Windhoek and Belgian Airline 357 from Brussels to Kinshasa.

South African Airways 237 moves from London to Johannesburg, SAA 260 from Johannesburg to Frankfurt, SAA 261 from Frankfurt to Johannesburg, SAA 264 from Johannesburg to Munich, SAA 265 from Munich to Johannesburg.

Emirates 261 runs from Dubai to Sao Paulo, Emirates 246 from Dubai to Rio De Janeiro and Qatar 922 from Sao Paulo to Doha. Prior to this development, the airlines used the Nigerian airspace for most of their flights.

Apart from the obvious damage this causes to the nation’s image, it also means loss of revenue to the country.

Those with knowledge of the situation, like officials of the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), have been barred by the minister from talking to the press. The minister, Oduah-Ogiemwonyi, directed all agencies to route all statements to the media through her ministry.

This is frightening.