*FG CARRIES OUT DRY TEST WITH AERO CONTRACTORS
+AIR PEACE TESTS ALL 25 PLANES ON ITS FLEET
Domestic flights are set to resume in Nigeria any time from now.
Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, stated this yesterday when he admitted that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is 90 percent ready to open up the airways for domestic flights in the country.
Sirika spoke after a dry test run flight of Aero Contractors from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja to the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos. The test run of the facilities in the two airports is to determine the readiness for the resumption of domestic flights.
He said all the protocol guidelines would be observed when the airports reopen, emphasising the importance of safety.
He said to ensure persons not permitted to be at the airport will not gain access to the airport, the physical distancing will begin right from the drop off points.
The aviation minister said passengers will aside from presenting their mode of identification, remove their masks for five seconds for the security operatives to confirm that they are truly the person to fly before they will be allowed into the airport.
“Nobody not permitted to travel will access the airport, adding that the new airport security operatives, have been trained to handle will ensure compliance with the help of K9,” he said.
Sirika said President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the directives for such and that it would be implemented to the later.
The minister explained that there will be zero contact with the person screening passengers, even as added that the seats in the departure hall have been reduced from 500 or 700 to 200 or 250.
Sirika said part of the readiness of the airports is the automated dispensing of soap and water at the toilets and limitation to a maximum of five persons in the restroom, are part of measures to ensure physical distancing.
He, however, said efforts will be made to stagger the flights to accommodate everyone without creating additional burdens for passengers.
The minister also explained that airlines have been given permission to carry out dry run of flights across the country to ensure the airworthiness of the planes.
Meanwhile, Air Peace airlines on Thursday, traversed the Nigerian airspace with several of its fleets of aircraft in test flights.
The airline’s mixed fleet of 25 aircraft which includes three wide body aircraft, the Boeing 777s, all took to the skies flying to Abuja, Port Harcourt and back to Lagos without passengers.
This, according to the airline is in readiness to resume operations as time draws near. These flights were aimed at ensuring that the aircraft are in tip-top condition, having been grounded for about three months though they have been under very strict storage maintenance.
The spokesperson of the airline, Stanley Olisa, who revealed this in a statement to journalists, said the shakedown flights are part of the measures the airline has developed to guarantee the safety of both passengers and crew when operations resume.
He noted that the aircraft have been in storage mode for a couple of months and extensive maintenance checks have been carried out to keep them up to the required standards.
Olisa said: “Within this period of flight ban, we have ramped up technical maintenance of all our aircraft, scaled up cabin refresh and carried out thorough disinfection to ensure they remain fit for the skies when the authorities flag off operations”. He added that the aircraft are now being brought out of storage and the pilots have been testing them, stressing that all pilots and flight attendants have been retrained in line with NCAA directives.
On the airline’s readiness to resume regular flights, he stated: “As you know, we have been operating ‘special flights’ to local and international destinations, and we have more of such flights in the works. This accentuates our preparedness for operation restart as our pilots, cabin crew and engineers have been hands-on and are very current. So, we are hundred percent ready to resume”.
Air Peace has been operating charter and evacuation flights to various international destinations even as the flight ban persists. In April, the airline delivered Federal Government’s medical supplies from Turkey and China to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also operated several evacuation flights to India, Israel and China in the last two months.
