By Kenneth Ehigiator

With the acquisition of the International Air Transport Association’s Operational Safety Audit, IOSA, and one of the most modern global Operational Control Centres, OCC, Arik Air appears set to play in the very competitive global aviation market.

All daily flight operations are planned and executed in the control centre, which also integrates a radar system.

Coming at a time the Federal Government is desirous of using aviation to drive the nation’s economy, the airline has said its innovative OCC would plug the loopholes created in its operation by inadequate customer service, occasioned by flight delays and cancellations.

A tour of the facility reveals that Arik’s OCC, which is the first in Africa and second only to Emirates in Dubai, worldwide could, aside from ensuring safety and boosting passengers’ confidence, will eliminate considerably, flight delays and cancellations.

Although the software driving the facility was developed by Baco Corporations, a South African firm, South African Airways is yet to acquire it.

With the control centre, the airline can at its headquarters in Ikeja, track the location of any of its aircraft and also make it possible for the officials to monitor on a screen, movement of aircraft from take off to landing anywhere in the world.

Placed against the backdrop of the fact that past accidents in the industry were engendered by weather-related causes, the capacity of the centre to churn out real time weather reports to complement those delivered by the meteorological agency, would help boost passengers’ confidence in air travels.

Still on weather, the state, represented by Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, set weather minima of 1600 ft above sea level for airlines in the country, especially during the harmattan season, but the airline has raised the bar further to 2,400 ft in efforts to ensure safe flight operations at all time.

“This is why we don’t allow our pilots to take off, even when others are taking the risk to flight. This facility here enables us to see for ourselves the weather situation before any flight.

“For instance, at Benin airport, though the state set the weather minima at 1600ft above sea level, we put ours at 2,400ft to further raise the bar. Therefore, this facility enables us to see the true picture of the weather, rather than just relying on the forecast from NIMET,” Senior Duty Manager of the control centre, Taiwo Folarin told Vanguard weekend.

He said the flight delays suffered by Arik Air had more to do with challenges offered by airport facilities than with its operations.

Folarin, who noted that the airline had enough aircraft to drive its domestic, regional and international operations, said issues relating to conveyor belts and turnaround time had been the major causes of flight delays in Arik.

He said: “It is only in Lagos and Abuja that we manage to achieve 45 minutes turnaround time, which we are still not comfortable with. In other airports such as Kaduna, Benin and others, it takes much longer than that, because of inadequate facilities at the airports.

“These are issues that impact on our operations which result in flight delays, but passengers won’t understand when these delays come. But we are trying the best we can to reduce time delays.