The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has commissioned the newly built Flight Data Centre located at the headquarters of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) in Abuja.
The Flight Data Centre, which houses
flight data analysis or monitoring systems, involves the systematic collection, processing, and evaluation of flight data from aircraft to identify trends, anomalies, or safety issues, and are integral to modern aviation safety management systems (SMS).
Speaking at the commissioning, the minister said: “One of our five-point agenda is to improve safety within the sector. This initiative here today actually speaks to that, that the fact that we are concentrating here on improving safety within the sector, and that, of course, would mean that we will keep moving up.
“What we just commissioned here today, which is a flight data center doesn’t work only during incidents or even serious incidents. It is even important for tracking of flights and the various human efforts and mechanical efforts in the process of a flight operations.”
Also speaking, the acting director-general of NCAA, Capt. Chris Najomo, said the centre is a requirement of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in the process of ensuring safety.
He said: “Specifically, Annex 19 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation mandates all states to establish safety data collection and processing systems (SDCPS) to capture, store, aggregate and enable the analysis of safety data and safety information. This is a hallmark of an effective State Safety Programme (SSP).
“In ensuring Nigeria, as an ICAO contracting state, discharges this obligation, the NCAA went into collaboration with APS Aerospace Corporation. APS possesses more than 100 years of combined experience in Flight Data and Cockpit/ATC Audio Analysis. This collaboration culminated in the training of selected NCAA staff by APS Aerospace to build human capacity.”
Speaking further on the importance of the centre, Najomo said the centre will enhance safety oversight as it will help NCAA proactively detect potential safety risks and also enable data-driven decision-making to prevent serious incidents and accidents.
He also said the centre will offer critical insights into flight events leading to incidents and improve the quality and speed of incident investigations.