Kenneth Ehigiator
The International Air  Transport Association’s Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is soon to become a requirement for airline registration in the country, and is expected to serve as a vehicle to checkmating airline indebtedness to aviation service providing agencies.

Director-General of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Dr. Harold Demuren, who disclosed this at a briefing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, also made case for recruitment of more women aircraft crew and engineers as an antidote to the problem of manpower in the nation’s aviation sector.

According to Demuren, the involvement of IATA in Nigerian airlines’ activities will ensure one hundred percent of collection of revenue due aviation parastatals, including the NCAA, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and others, through the Bill Settlement Plan (BSP) of the airline group.

Demuren, who blamed airlines’ accumulated debts on what he described as weak collection techniques of agencies providing services to the airlines, said it would become very difficult, if not impossible, for airlines to owe, as charges would be deducted at source by IATA when the airlines become members of the group.

“Weak collection of revenue by the NCAA of the five percent passenger service charge (PSC) is responsible for the reason airlines are not remitting the charge collected on behalf of the NCAA and other aviation parastatals.

“IATA is now coming in to ensure one hundred percent collection of bills through the Bill Settlement Plan (BSP) where money will be collected at source.  In fact, we want to make IOSA certification one of the requirements airlines must meet to be registered for operations in the country,” he said.

He expressed satisfaction at the fact that Bellview Airlines and Virgin Nigeria Airways were already within IATA fold, stressing that the NCAA was doing everything possible to encourage other airlines in the country to undergo IOSA.

He said: “Bellview and Virgin Nigeria are already in there, having successfully undergone IOSA certification.  We are trying to get Arik, Aero and Chanchangi into the fold.  By the time we succeed in getting these airlines to undergo IOSA, others would have no choice but to key in.
“Those airlines as Dana and IRS will have no choice but to also undergo IOSA as soon as possible, especially when it now becomes a pre-requisite for issuance of Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC).

Demuren said, though it was normal to owe in business, a situation where airlines would fail to remit money already collected from passengers would no longer tolerated, adding that aviation service providers, especially NAMA and FAAN, needed the funds to be able to upgrade infrastructure and facilities at airports across the country.

On the preference for recruitment for women aircraft crew and engineers, Demuren said the womenfolk were more stable and reliable with regards to job mobility.

He said recruitment women would help to check the brain drain of professionals in the aviation industry in Nigeria to other parts of the world.

He said the growth of the industry in Asia, especially India, China and Singapore, which have all witnessed monumental growth in aviation, had put the industry in the country and Africa as a whole under pressure, as the very good hands in the industry here were now moving out in drove in search of greener pastures.

Demuren expressed hope that with recent development of an all-female crew by Aerocontractors, Nigeria may soon drift out of manpower problem.

He also recommended same for other African countries, if they were to overcome the problem of manpower which, according to him, had become a clear and present danger for the aviation industry on the continent.