The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has promised to accelerate the digitalization of Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) due to its importance to the safety of civil aviation.
The Managing Director of the Agency, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu made the promise at the World AIS Day, which held at the agency’s headquarters in Lagos.
Akinkuotu said there are critical deliverables of the Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) which represents a global migration to a dynamic data oriented aeronautical information management system.
Such automation, he noted, facilitates the timely exchange of aeronautical information in an accurate and standardised format from anywhere to everywhere globally, on real time basis, adding that this is what makes the completion of the automation a must for the agency.
Akinkuotu said for the dream of AIS Automation to be realised, it behoves the staff of the department to put in their best to see that their service both at the individual and group level remains invaluable, remarking that they could do this through extensive research and paper presentation at seminars, targeted at enriching the system and taking it to the next level.
He promised to open his doors to their professional and technical advice which he said would give him the needed guidance in taking key decisions.
Akinkuotu also commended the staff of the AIS department for their diligence, hard work and dedication to duty.
“AIS remains one of the most critical departments in the agency even though they are hardly given the prominence they deserve, because their job most often, is behind-the-scene,” he said, stressing that the absence of AIS in the system would bring about chaos in the entire civil aviation.
In his welcome address, the General Manager, AIS, Mr Kabir Gusau appealed to NAMA management to consider the periodic training and retraining of AIS personnel which, according to him, “would bring staff up to speed with modern trends in a dynamic aviation industry and also prepare them to effectively embrace automation when fully deployed.”
Gusau also stressed on the need for the agency, through the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), to ensure that qualified AIS personnel were licensed as this would bolster them towards hard work, commitment to duty and enhanced productivity.
