•Fokker pledges support

By Jimoh Babatunde &  Daniel Eteghe

The General Manager of IRS Airline Mr. Yemi Dada  has revealed that crew members of his aircraft will soon be assessing their documents  in the cockpits electronically. He disclosed this recently in a chat with journalists on the reasons his company is sticking to the Fokker aircrafts which he said best suits the Nigerian domestic aviation scene.

Yomi Dada said the airline has used the Fokker aircraft with good return on investment over the years as it cost less to maintain among others. In attendance at the press briefing were officials of the Fokker Technologies, makers of the Fokker aircraft series.

IRS General Manager said the airline is preparing to modify all the aircraft in its fleet, Mr. Yemi said. This includes the modification which will allow the crew in the cockpit access their documentation electronically using the Ipad. It is one of the revolution available around to enable them  carry  their document. Yemi  Dada said “Fokker Service has come up now with a modification that will allow the cockpit crew looks at their airway chart, their manual and so on, on the IPad in the cockpit. We are currently looking at the mode of implementing this and we will definitely do that to help modernize what we do. We will definitely be buying the modification, of course we will have to discuss with NCAA on some of the modalities for that.

This is going to help move us a little to the next frontier in terms of electronic flight documentation,” he said. Mr. Yemi Dada speaking on why his airline is sticking with Fokker products  said “It was very easy for our crew to fly, manageability was wonderful. The landings you get from the F28, I think, is designed to give you a very comfortable landing. And so we grew the fleet of the F28 to four.

“And going forward we found out that as our patronage continue to increase, we needed to also increase the capacity of what we had and of course we have enjoyed the F28, so naturally we turned to another Fokker product which is the F100. Moving from the F28 to F100, we continue to get benefits, such as a lot of savings on fuel, the ease with which the crew will fly the airplane.”

Meanwhile, Fokker Technologies, makers of the Fokker aircraft series have said itis committed to a long time haul partnership with IRS airlines, one ofNigeria’s indigenous airlines.

The sales manager of Fokker Services Heino Van Der Laan said the company was in Nigeria for a long haul. He said “If you look at IRS, it operates the F100 with some flag carriers all over the world. I can assure you that these operators they have TDR exceeding 99.5%. We also need to make sure that all the parts are still available. So we have been doing that over the last 15 years. We guarantee you that up till 2030 and beyond  we will support  the Fokker product. We will keep the production in place. It is long  time  commitment we have with the Fokker product. So we really hope that IRS will continue the Fokker cooperation and maybe get a bigger air fleet for decades  to come and we will be there to support the  operation.”

Regional Sales Manager for Africa of  Fokker Bart Guerten said his team  was in Nigeria to work out an agreement in which IRS will  participate  “in our cooling programmes when it comes to spares, and component  repairs to make  sure that IRS at all times will have excess, not only  by our spares located in Nigeria but also by  our central pool in Netherlands to all their critical aircraft components.”