NAMA collaborates with runway teams for air travel safety

The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has pledged to collaborate with the newly inaugurated Runway Safety Teams at the nation’s major airports in their bid to enhance safety of air navigation along runways and associated airside facilities.

Acting Managing Director of the agency, Engr. Emma Anasi, while receiving members of the Lagos Runway Safety Team in Lagos yesterday, said that the inauguration of runway safety teams in the country was “another giant step towards enhancing safety of air travel particularly along the airside where the most critical phases of flight take place.”

It would be recalled that runway safety teams were recently inaugurated for Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt airports in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandate on the establishment of such teams at all international airports

Anasi said that as an ICAO requirement, runway safety teams are indispensable because of their ability to closely monitor and give prompt attention to safety issues arising from the airside like the derubberisation of the tarmac.

The NAMA boss, who was represented on the occasion by the Acting Director of Operations, Ifeanyi Okwor, assured the team that NAMA, as an agency whose mandate borders on safety of air navigation, would partner and support runway safety teams in the country to realize their objectives.

Earlier in her remarks, the leader of the Lagos Runway Safety Team, Ngozi Njoku, of the Safety Department at the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), solicited the agency’s support in the provision of office accommodation, operational vehicle for runway inspection, customized reflective jackets, training of personnel and other logistics to ensure effective takeoff of their operations.