The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has resolved to constantly upgrade navigational infrastructure in the country.
This is borne out of the determination to enhance safety, improve operational efficiency of airlines and increase their profitability in the long run through reduced operational costs.
The acting Managing Director of NAMA, Matthew Pwajok, stated this in Abuja after a successful test flight of the Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) flight procedure using the agency’s calibration aircraft.
He expressed confidence that the implementation of SBAS would enhance safety, efficiency and capacity of the Air Traffic Management system.
According to him, this would also increase the efficiency of the airlines through reduced flight time and turnaround time, reduced fuel consumption, reduced workload for both pilots and air traffic controllers and increased profitability over time.
“The whole essence of the SBAS is to improve on the integrity, accuracy, availability and continuity of the PBN signals by deploying a ground infrastructure or a master station that receives signals from several satellites, triangulates them and takes the best location and then broadcast it through a broadcast media globally to be received by any aircraft within that airspace. So, we have done PBN that provides lateral guidance needed to locate an airport but we have gone a step further to improve on it by implementing precision approaches using the satellite provided by Nigerian Communications Satellite (NIGCOMSAT).”
Pwajok said while PBN would provide lateral guidance for the aircraft to locate an airport, SBAS would provide improved accuracy, improved integrity of the signals, improved availability and continuity of the signals as it collects information from several signals or satellites rather than an aircraft using just one signal from a GPS to fly.
The NAMA boss said: “The SBAS would be a win-win situation for airlines because over time they have been focusing attention on reducing cost and increasing profitability and this innovation will surely be of immense benefit to them in that regard.”
He maintained that an aircraft would not require more than a retrofit for those that have been flying PBN and that it would not be capital-intensive for an airline to acquire a retrofit.
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