Nigeria to Announce New Resumption Date for Local Flights

Posted by African Examiner African News, Business News, Featured, Latest Headlines Thursday, June 25th, 2020

By Ganiyu Nasirudeen

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Federal Government (FG) has hinted that it will announce a new date for resumption of local flights operation next week.

Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika gave the hint Thursday in Abuja during the briefing by members of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

The Minister who was represented by the Director-General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Captain Musa Nuhu announced that a dry run test would be conducted in Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja as part of the preparation to commence flight operation.

Sirika disclosed: “Since the last announcement that Sunday 21st of June is no longer feasible for the opening of the airports, we would like to report that we have had significant progress in the readiness of the industry to restart.

“The gaps have been closed but however, we still have a few gaps within the aviation ecosystem and this will be closed hopefully in the next couple of days.

“I have said it and I will keep saying it; we must get it right the first time both on the issues of technical safety and health safety of all stakeholders and one of the things we are going to use to close some of the gaps is a dry run test of both Lagos and Abuja airport coming up on Saturday.

“After the dry runs, we will observe the gaps that might still be there and close them. After that, we will announce the date of the restart next week.

“Aviation is already a very complex system on its own and by the time you add the COVID-19 pandemic to it, it complicates a very complex system. We will not take any chance. We are almost there. When we close the few remaining gaps in the aviation ecosystem, we will start.”