Air Peace Set To Resume Abuja Flights, As FG Reopens Abuja Airport Tomorrow

In fulfilment of its promise to fix the runway and oth­er facilities at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Air­port within six weeks, the Fed­eral Government will tomor­row reopen the shut airport for normal operations.
The decision of the govern­ment to reopen the airport on Wednesday is informed by the approval of the work done on the facility by aviation industry regulators as meeting interna­tional standards.
The Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, has repeatedly assured Nigeri­ans that the repairs on the air­port would be completed with­in six weeks.

Sirika vowed to resign his appointment if work on the air­port was extended by one day.
Ahead of tomorrow’s planned reopening of the air­port, the Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Mr. Us­man Muktar, for two consecu­tive days, led a team of aviation experts to assess the work done on the runway of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
After the exercise on Mon­day, Muktar declared that “the runway is ready for operation and can be opened on Wednesday.”
He told newsmen during the inspection of the airport’s run­way on Monday in Abuja that the NCAA had concluded the second phase of inspection as a follow-up to the recommendations made to the contractors to correct some areas of concern earlier identified by a team of experts.
The Federal Government had on March 8, 2017, shut the Abuja airport for six weeks to repair its 3.6-kilometre runway.
Consequently, flight activi­ties were diverted from the air­port to the Kaduna Internation­al Airport.
The NCAA boss said that in arriving at the decision to certi­fy the airport ready for use, the team on Sunday inspected the work done on the runway and made certain observations – but the observed lapses were not crit­ical safety issues.
Muktar said that when the team returned yesterday, it found that the issues had been addressed.
On the state of the airport, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted Muktar as say­ing: “We have carried out the in­spection and we have confirmed that the job has been done quite satisfactorily in line with the In­ternational Civil Aviation Organ­isation (ICAO) standard and rec­ommended practices.
“So, the airport and the run­way are very ready to accept flight operations safely. By this, we are declaring that the airport and its runway are quite operational at the time that has been deter­mined as the official opening of this airport”.
Muktar said that the agen­cy had issued “Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)’’ to all aviators world­wide that the airport is ready for reopening on Wednesday as scheduled.
On the calibration of the air­port, he said that nothing had been tampered with as far as the instrument landing system was concerned to warrant the exer­cise.
According to him, calibra­tions are normally scheduled and very soon the airport will also be calibrated along with others.
“It will be normal routine cal­ibration which will be applicable to other airports that are due for recalibration,” he said.
Earlier, the Managing Direc­tor of the Federal Airports Au­thority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mr. Saleh Dunoma, said that the run­way was fully ready for reopen­ing, adding that it had been com­pletely cleaned up.
Dunoma said that the NCAA had given the operators a “clean bill of health’’, stressing that some of the observations raised by the team of experts on the repair of the runway had been corrected.
He explained that the runway was cleared “because we have our technical team working across the length and breadth of the run­way to make sure that every detail is observed. That is why all equip­ment have been evacuated from the runway.”
“Later, all the professionals in NCAA and FAAN will carry out a detailed inspection again to en­sure that all debris are cleaned up during final cleaning. Any mo­ment from now, if there is any aircraft, we are ready to receive that aircraft, but of course, in avia­tion there are procedures because NOTAM has to be issued and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) will do that and then we are ready,” he said.
Meanwhile, Air Peace Air­lines will tomorrow resume flight operations at the Abuja Airport.
In a statement issued by the airlines’ Corporate Communica­tions Manager, Mr. Chris Iwarah, on Monday in Lagos, he said the move followed the completion of the rehabilitation of the airport’s runway.
The company commended travellers for keeping faith with it and by making a huge sacri­fice to ensure that the repair of the bad portions of the runway of the airport was done.
Air Peace also praised the Federal Government and Sena­tor Sirika for ensuring the speedy completion of the repairs of the airport facility.