Senator Hadi Sirika, the Minister of State for Aviation, has applauded the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA for retaining the United States Federal Aviation Administration FAA Category One status using in house capacity.
Senator Hadi Sirika, speaking during the presentation of the category One Certification to him by the Director General of the NCAA, Capt Usman Mukthar at the NCAA Annex, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, said the retention of the FAA Category one status using in-house personnel showed that the capacity of Nigeria Aviation has improved tremendously like their counterparts in the international scene.
Receiving the certification, the Minister thanked Capt Usman for making Nigeria proud, stressing that the Category one status is very significant to the industry.
“I thank the DG and his team for doing us proud in retaining the category one certification which has been presented to me.
The travelling public might not be aware but we in aviation are aware of the feat”.
“Before the commencement of the audit, some groups have approached me to engage them as experts to guide us in getting the Category One at a cost after boasting of how they have been engaged in the past to help the country get the certification and how they have also helped some other countries to get their Category One, but the NCAA achieved that feat using in-house capacity”
Usman who presented the certification as a birthday gift to the Minister said “in 2010, we attained category one status, in 2014, we sustained it. In 2018, we have been able to retain it”.
Usman stated that in-house personnel were used to achieve the feat unlike before when external assistance were sought.
He also read the official email conveyed to him by the FAA Administrator, Mr. Dan Elwell, indicating that the country had scaled the audit .
Nigeria scaled through a recent re-certification audit conducted on its aviation facilities by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
A team of auditors from the FAA had visited Nigeria for the audit of the safety status of the country’s civil aviation industry in November 2017.
The audit which was for the Category One (Cat 1) certification enables direct flight connections between the US and other countries.
It was gathered that the FAA Administrator, Mr. Dan Elwell, had conveyed the message of the country scaling the audit exercise to the Director General/CEO of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Capt. Muhtar Usman.
It was also learnt that a fresh certification from the FAA on the new status would be issued the country before the end of March 2018.
The –re-certification status will enable Nigerian registered carriers to continue to fly directly to the United States of America. There are eight critical elements required to be fulfilled before a country can scale the FAA audit.
The eight critical elements are: legislation, regulations, organisations, technical staff, technical guidance tools, licensing, continuous surveillance and resolution of safety concerns. While in Nigeria, the FAA had carried out intensive internal aviation safety assessment of the sector and there were fears that Nigeria may not retain the status it earned in September 2010.
Nigeria it was gathered retained the status after NCAA, and other major agencies in the sector closed all the identified “open items” when the FAA team visited Nigeria in August, 2017 to lodge complaints of some lapses in its regulatory oversight function
