BY Leke Adeseri , South West Regional Editor & DANIEL ETEGHE
THE Lagos airport radar was shut down on Saturday by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, to avert a total collapse that would have plunged the aviation industry into crisis.

One of the General Managers in the Engineering Department of the agency that pleaded anonymity, confirmed yesterday that the action was taken in the best interest of the industry.

According to him, a total failure of the radar would have plunged the aviation industry into a big crisis situation.

The General Manager pointed out that it would have been difficult for the Air Traffic Controllers, ATC, to effectively monitor the various aircraft in the air in the event that the radar system was allowed to shut down completely.

He said; “ It is true that the radar was shut down briefly because of power redundancy. But if it had completely shut down, definitely we would have had a crisis in our hands.

“It means if you have aircrafts that are sequence on their final lap, that is about landing and then everything suddenly goes off. You may not know the number of aircrafts and the spacing between one another, their flight levels and so on, so that can cause problem”

“This is what is called procedural air navigation- you need to see what the aircraft is doing, you want to talk to an aircraft, you need to know the flight level and sequence them on landing, you need to see them and see their performance, you have to see their altitude as well” he added.

The source further stressed that NAMA on no occasion shut down the radar intentionally adding that  any mistake by any engineer in the event of carrying out his duty may lead to an air crash where such a person could lose his relations just like in the Dana air crash that happened recently.

NAMA confirms shut down

Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, has confirmed that the Lagos radar was shut down briefly to protect the system from technical defect following power outage at the site which affected the Automatic Mains Failure (AMF) switch.

An airport surveillance radar (ASR) is a radar system used at airports to detect and display the position of aircraft in the terminal area.

The Digital Airport Surveillance Radar, DASR, which is in use at the Lagos airport is a new terminal air traffic control radar system that replaced the analog system with new digital technology.

The older radars, some up to 20 years old, are being replaced to improve reliability, provide additional weather data, reduce maintenance cost, improve performance, and provide digital data to new digital automation systems for presentation on air traffic controller displays.

The Automatic Mains Failure switch connects or disconnects the mains or generator and vice versa depending on availability.

The breakdown of the switch over the weekend was caused by incessant power outage at the airport, forcing the agency to deploy an emergency procedure to save the system from colossal damage.