Aeronautical Information Services Association of Nigeria (AISAN) President, Shittu Babatunde, bares his mind on some burning issues in the aviation industry in this encounter with Special Correspondent, Emma Ayungbe, in Uyo.
What AIS does
Aeronautical Information Services (AIS) provides aeronautical information service within a defined area of coverage. The information is for the safety, regularity, and efficiency of air navigation.
Use of AIS
AIS is useful for aircraft operators, pilots, engineers, and crew to get adequate information. For any aircraft to depart this country, it must file what is called flight plan. A flight plan tells when you are going, how you are going, and where you are going.
It is in that office they do all those submissions. Aircraft operators, the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), metrological department, and even the military are connected through AIS.
Whether you are using a small aircraft or a big aircraft or your transportation business is small or large, you must have available varieties of information concerning air navigation you want to use.
For example, if your car is going on the road, you know it will follow a road. An aircraft uses the sky; under this sky, there are some aids on the ground, such as trimming landing system, distance measuring equipment, et cetera.
Where you are going, what type of regulation do they have there; the pilots would want to know. Before an aircraft flies into this country, it would need a permit and when you get this permit, it has to be signed here and there before the aircraft can come in.
Then they want to know at short notice too, if there are changes to those procedures, to those services.
These are what we do and we present them in a form known as Notice to Airmen (NOTAM).
It makes us look at the pilot, the runway the pilot is supposed to land on; if it is closed, we make sure he is informed that the runway is closed, warning him not to ply such runway or that the lighting system is faulty; maybe the lighting system that they used to land in the night is faulty, then they cannot land in the night; they will be informed through Notice to Airmen.
The job meets the needs of airline operators, small or big.
AIS and air crashes
We may not say we take responsibility for air crashes. There are distinct roles. It is not only AIS that makes up the aviation industry but we play a very vital role.
Yes, if an aircraft crashes, we have a department called Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB). They will first go to AIS to do their investigation; they will go there to find out what happened because that is where the flight plan must first be filed.
They will look at whether the aircraft filed the flight plan before asking what happened.
I give you an example. There was a day I was on afternoon duty when they brought a NOTAM to close one of the runways in Lagos where we have two runways; one on the right, the other on the left.
They had closed one of the runways and we did the NOTAM. The next day when I came back I noticed that the NOTAM had not been fully distributed, and I asked the officer on duty if he did not know the importance of runway closure.
I said I wasn’t going to take over, he would go and distribute the remaining NOTAM. So the guy went and distributed it. The next day an aircraft crashed on that runway because there was some construction work going on and there was a caterpillar parked on the runway.
When AIB came for investigation, the first place they came was our office. They asked if there was a NOTAM, and we said yes. Was the runway closed? We said yes. Was the NOTAM distributed? We said yes.
They were okay and left for the control tower. They saw the NOTAM before the guy on duty and that exonerated us.
Collating information
The aviation industry is about people doing their job; you do your bit and I do my bit. Nobody is an island in this business.
We have what is called related services. I provide information, but all the information I prepare does not come from me most of the time, it comes from related services.
For example, an engineer in the field could see that some equipment of an aircraft are faulty, he will report to me and I will notice it, then I will tell the pilot.
If a pilot in flight experiences any inadequacy he will record it and bring it to our office. I will pass it on to the appropriate authorities who will issue a NOTAM to inform everybody that the equipment is faulty, and when it is due for service, we inform them.
There are two things here; we are saying services, we are saying management. Aeronautical information management all overthe world is moving towards management. Services have to do with manual operations while management has to do with digital operations.
That entails a lot of equipment to be purchased. It entails the automation of the company, it entails a lot. We are not there yet but very soon I believe we are going to get there.