The Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers Association, NATCA in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency NAMA will play host to Air Traffic Controllers in Africa and the Middle in Abuja from November 5th-9th, 2018.
The event is the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers, IFATCA workshop and Conference, were over 300 delegates including those in Nigeria will come together to chart a new course in safe air traffic control in the regions.
The Theme of the 29th IFATCA Conference is: Seamless, Friendly Sky.
Speaking on the conference, the NATCA President, comrade Victor Eyaru said at the last Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nigeria bidded and won the host right for 2018, adding that this will be the second time Nigeria will be hosting the event after the first one in 2011.
“During the conference, there will training of controllers, this is the first time this will be done and Nigeria will be used as a test case. This training will save for aviation parastatals a lot of foreign exchange, it will be free of charge”.
Comrade Eyaru noted that to ensure safe air navigation in Nigeria more air traffic controllers are needed to handle the volume of aircraft.
According to him, an additional 700 controllers are required to effectively manned the airspace, adding that the 400 controllers was grossly inadequate.
Eyaru called on government to employ at least 50-100 controllers annually to ensure a vacuum was not created when some of it members retire from service.
The NATCA President also called on government to deployed another radar for air traffic control as the current one was not working at optimally due to lack of spares for maintenance.
He said Thales was frustrating the efforts of NAMA in this regards, adding that going back to procedural control in the event that the current radar fails would be a heaculean task for the controllers.
Eyaru explained that there should be a back-up that would be in use when the radar fails, adding that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, ADS-B can be purchased to complement procedural if the radar was absent.
“It is not good to go back to procedural control if the radar fails, we need another radar”.
