Works on the previously suspended proposed Nigeria’s national carrier, Nigeria Air, is gradually gaining traction as the transaction advisers have concluded baseline study on the company.
The Minister of Aviation Sen. Hadi Sirika disclosed this when he met with the executive officers of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
The minister also said he will be meeting the transaction advisers soon to fine tune grey areas that might exist.
He said the procurement of the national carrier is still in course and will delivered as planned.
On the second runway for the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, he said the procurement is captured in the 2019 budget.
“The second runway project is in the budget and it will be procured by God’s grace. The national carrier is in the pipeline and in the next one hour I will be meeting with the transaction advisers. They are in town and they have concluded their baseline studies and we are moving to the next stage. So that is also on course” he said.
The minister also spoke on efforts to improve aviation safety.
“On the issue of communication, I want to say that what we have in the country is being improved upon and not only that it is being improved, very soon all of that will be history. A lot have been approved to improve the communications and radar capability of our country’s air space” he said.
“And I’m sure that we have improved on our performance-based navigation system. However, I just say that airlines need to up their equipment and personnel. There’s no point you put a CAT-3 system and their equipment can’t function with it or when the airlines’ pilots are not trained for it,” he noted.
