When Night Life Returns To Lagos Airport’s Second Runway

The economic consequences of not fixing the Lagos airport 18/L for over 16 years are huge to airlines and the entire aviation value chain, WOLE SHADARE writes

Answered prayers

For many years, precisely nearly 16 years, the second runway of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, operated without airfield lighting. For many years, airline operators struggled and mounted pressure on the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to provide light on the second runway popularly referred to as 18/ Left.

The operators and experts in the sector did not relent in their call to save the airlines, particularly domestic carriers, the enormous amount of fuel they burn to taxi from the wider, longer 18/ Right which international airlines use most of the time. The news and efforts by the airport authority to match its words with action have elicited joy among operators and stakeholders.

 

Commitment

To show its seriousness, FAAN said it had concluded arrangements to complete the installation of the Airfield Ground Lighting system on runway 18L/36R.

The project, which commenced effectively on July 8, 2022, is expected to last for 90 days. Consequently, Runway 18L/36R will be closed to flight operations during this time, the authority disclosed in a statement recently by the spokeswoman for the agency, Mrs. Faithful A. Hope-Ivbaze. She assured stakeholders that there would be no disruption to flight operations, saying, “all normal flight operations will be conducted through runway 18R/36L.”

Reduced operations

The airport is central to the operations of all domestic carriers. Daily operations begin and end in Lagos for most aircraft. Without runway lighting for night operations, the runway is shut at sunset, forcing the domestic terminal and airlines to wind down operations at dusk — the peak air business globally. The Lagos Airport domestic runway, which was re-commissioned in 2006 after refurbishment and rehabilitation, has been without runway lights.

This has made it difficult for flights to take off or land on the runway at night, forcing domestic airlines to land at the international wing at night and then taxi to the domestic side.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) had, earlier this year, approved N2.3 billion for the supply and installation of airfield ground lighting for the MMIA, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja and Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano.

The carriers, over the years, may have spent over N6 billion on the amount they burn to taxi from 18/R runway whenever it is past 6 pm as air traffic controllers forbid them from landing on the 18/Left and remained a sunset ‘airport’ like many other aerodromes that do not have night landing facilities.

Failed efforts

The administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo had, in 2006, approved the sum of N19.5 billion as an aviation intervention fund to secure the country’s skies after a series of plane crashes that claimed many lives.

From this, a contract worth N3.56 billion was awarded to P.W Nigeria Limited in 2006 for the resurfacing and expansion of the runway 18L/36R by 150 metres. The cost of the airfield lighting was not included in the contract.

The FAAN 2011 came out and blamed the non-installation of the airfield lighting at the Murtala Mohammed domestic airport runway 18L on a court order slammed on the agency by an aggrieved party stopping the Federal Government from going ahead with the job.

This was even as FAAN hinted then that the contractor, PW Nigeria, have been mobilised to the site and are waiting for the courts to rescind the garnishing order before it could commence work.

Ding-dong

It had been a ding-dong affair to fix this critical safety tool. Successive ministers of aviation had come and gone without giving it a serious thought and without considering how important it is to airlines and air traffic controllers.

After the 10-month promise, a former managing director of FAAN confirmed that the contract for the project had been awarded and that the job would be delivered soon.

He said: “We are working assiduously to mobilise the contractor; the contractor is in the process of being paid; he is just about signing the agreement with the authority.

Once he signs the agreement in the next few days, he would be mobilised to start work very soon. He has given us a completion period of 10 months. The contractor has met with the airport authority and we have planned the time that he should be able to work effectively.”

Another minister, Fidelia Njeze, came on board 11 months after Babatunde Omotoba and made her own promises that plans were on to improve the quality of aviation services and that in the next three months, the Air Field Lightings (AFL) system would be installed at the domestic runway 18 Left at Murtala Mohammed Airport Lagos.

The facility, however, briefly came up sometime on December 26, 2012, when the facility was withdrawn from FAAN by a former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, and handed over to the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), which deployed 66 KALKIT brands of emergency airfield lights and additional two-approach lights, but that was reverted after a while and FAAN again took control of the AFL.

Experts’ views

An airline operator who spoke to Aviation Metric on condition of anonymity said: “Without the runway lighting, aircraft take-offs are delayed every morning. In the evening, we face congestion trying to compete with foreign carriers on Runway 18R. “Nothing should stop the airlines from operating round the clock in 24-hour airports.

We have opened a new terminal, but forget that to make the runway work optimally. All these have serious cost implications on operations. Passengers will blame airlines for flight delays, but these are the restraining factors that we are facing.”

A former commandant of the Lagos Airport, Group Capt. John Ojikutu (rtd), said FAAN had no excuse for neglecting the runway and the R parallel taxiway in Lagos for nearly two decades.

Ojikutu said in as much as they would want to blame funding, the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, is in financial fine-fettle to regularly upgrade its facilities to world standards. “My knowledge of airports’ earnings tells me that MMA alone can generate a minimum of N100 billion revenue.

The question I have asked severally is: why can’t the airport spend 10 percent of its earnings on the maintenance of the airport infrastructure and facilities?

“What are the actual earnings from our airports that the maintenance of the critical infrastructure and facilities are in disrepair and are neglected?

Unfortunately too, the staff unions and airline operators are not seen or known to be vigorously complaining about these neglects,” Ojikutu said.

Experts’ views

Managing Director of FAAN, Capt. Rabiu Yadudu, recently said that the equipment would be installed on the runway by the third quarter of 2022. According to him, FAAN had contacted the contractors who had promised to install the facilities on or before July 2022.

With this, Yadudu said that aircraft would be able to land and take off on the runway at night, thereby saving fuel consumption for them. Yadudu regretted the pains the airline operators had gone through over the years due to the absence of the facility but noted that some of the challenges were inherited by the current management.

Last line

Non-provision of airfield lighting in runways at many Nigerian airports have been described as a threat to safety, as flights that have safety, problems cannot land on them after daylight, and flights cannot take off from such airports after dusk.

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