Author: Wole Shadare

The Director-General of Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) Director General/CEO, Professor Abubakar Sani Mashi, embark on a marathon national tour of the Agency’s operations.   This tour kicked off at the operational headquarters of NiMet at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, as part of his firsthand assessment of the quality of the wide array of services NiMet offers, in line with its core mandate. To ensure the Director General’s tour kicked off on a fitting…

African airlines had their best performance since 2012, with passenger demand up 7.4 per cent.  Growth in the region is underpinned by strong demand on routes to/from the Middle East and Asia, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA)   The group, in a full year global passenger traffic result it announced for 2016 shows that demand (revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) rose 6.3 per cent compared to 2015 (or 6.0 per cent if…

  * Nigeria with largest passenger traffic in the African   The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has selected two airports in Nigeria for certification. The airports are those in Lagos and Abuja. The objective was to follow up on the African-Indian Ocean (AFI) Plan project and assist Nigeria with technical guidance towards the certification process. The world aviation regulatory body has commenced the implementation of the AFI Plan Aerodrome Certification Project for both aerodromes….

ACCIDENT TO DANA AIRCRAFT A LOOK AT MINISTERIAL PANEL REPORT   BY CAPT. DELE ORE   The panel is titled ‘Technical and Administrative Review Panel of Domestic Airlines’.   The panel was premature in set-up and in conflict with Accident Investigation Bureau Mandate. When an accident occurs the accident investigation body does not just focus on the accident but examines the aviation system within which the accident occurred including all the matters in the terms…

The clearing house for over 260 global airlines, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Africa, currently accounts for just 1.6 per cent of the global air cargo market share.     The continent saw a 13.6 per cent rise in cargo traffic – measured in Freight Tonne Kilometres (FTKs)- during December 2016.     IATA made the disclosure in its latest monthly analysis of performance and trends in the air cargo market. It further…

Fourty-one Nigerians were today deported by the British government. Also deported were 41 Ghanaians over immigration issues classified as offenses in the English laws.   The Nigerian deportees, 33 males and eight females, arrived the cargo section of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos at 7:50 am, in an unmarked chartered Airbus 330 aircraft.       The deportees were downcast. A mild drama ensued when one of the deportees, an elderly woman who…

Med-View Airline PlC was yesterday listed in the Nigerian Capital Market as one of the publicly quoted companies registered with the Nigerian Stock Exchange(NSE), adding N14.65bn into market capitalization.   Med-View is one of the domestic airlines in the country flying into 14 local, regional and international destinations.   With a turnover of N3.6bn at the initial stages of operations, its turnover has grown to N26bn with a projected growth of N 76bn in the…

  Airlines Are Experimenting With New Strategies To Survive In The Complex Aviation World, Writes WOLE SHADARE   Bristow’s ‘all-coach-class’ experiment on some routes, a major departure from industry practice for scheduled domestic flights, is the latest in an industry trend toward niche marketing. Bristow Helicopters (Nigeria), arguably the largest helicopter operator in Nigeria, assumes that nearly all its Lagos-Abuja- Port-Harcourt-bound passengers are leisure travellers paying good fares and that filling the plane with them…

The inability of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to ensure that the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) carries out compliance with approved runway maintenance programme led to the hard decision taken by the Federal Government to close the Abuja airport runway for rehabilitation, stakeholders have said. Consequently, they insisted that the two agencies should be held responsible for the decay of the facilities, wondering what was their input considering that the runway’s lifespan…