What ATC error?
MINISTER of Aviation, Babatunde Omotoba has the powers to suspend whoever he thinks is performing below the low expectations of his ministry. However, he does not have the right to titillate Nigerians with tales of the improved state of the equipment used in the industry.
His current campaign gives the impression that the problem with Nigerian aviation is a few air traffic controllers, who miscalculate the distances between aircraft in flight. He has to look deeper for the problems, if he intends to solve them.
Since October 30 when an aircraft bearing Governor Godswill Akpabio of Cross River State almost collided mid-air with another aircraft, Chief Omotoba has been busy promoting the high standards of safety in the industry, a safety that is based on equipment, most of which has not yet been installed. Where it is installed, the equipment is yet to be fully operational.
True, a few things might have changed since the air crashes that stunned the nation four years ago. The minister should address Nigerians on concrete measures government took after those crashes to improve safety. Would the minister have been in this active mode if the missed collision did not involve a governor?
Why would he punish an air traffic controller, who was working with, possibly, obsolete equipment? Has the minister heard that most air traffic controllers are over-worked, poorly paid and hardly re-trained? What has been done about complaints about their conditions of service? How would the suspension of an air traffic controller change the decay in equipment, the low morale of aviation workers, the blackouts and equipment that belong to another century?
Were the two aircraft involved in the incident grounded because they were the only ones that could have malfunctioning equipment?
Anyone who patronises our airlines has a litany of complaints about the poor state of facilities, from the common ones like the arrival and departure halls to the substandard services that the airlines offer. The Minister of Aviation presides over a ministry that took almost four years to re-surface one runway of the Murtala Mohammed Airport , Ikeja.
Congestions on ground and in the air are real. Growth in the number of airlines, passenger traffic, and demand for spaces for shops and businesses at our airports has outstripped the facilities, many of which were completed more than 30 years ago. The Abuja airports are worthy testimonies to embarrassing underestimation of the needs of passengers and airlines.
Can the minister spare some attention for these issues?
The attitude of jumping into the public’s face with supposed actions whenever a top politician complains about an incident, makes government self-serving and devoted to a clique of like minded people who think that air transportation is safe, once their planes do not hit each other mid-air.
