NiMET sets to commission Lagos, Abuja pilot briefing rooms

Abiola Seun

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has said that its upgraded pilot briefing rooms in Lagos and Abuja will be commissioned soon.

The Director General of Nimet, Prof Mansur Matazu who disclosed this to journalists at the Murtala Mohammed international Airport Ikeja over the weekend after receiving the ATQ magazines aviation impactful agency award of 2021, urged airlines, pilots and crew encourage pilots and crew members to always approach the briefing rooms for proper updates

“Even though we provide some of these services via e-mail but in the briefing, they get to know details of what they should expect, at times for us in NIMET we use that platform to get feedback because they are the ones that fly in the air and they can give us a very useful feedback”

“In that, we do what we call forecast evaluation. They evaluate what is given to them, so we encourage them to always visit the briefing rooms of NiMet”

He revealed that the agency was also deploying runway visual range, an additional aid vision machine along the runway that can allow aircraft to land and takeoff even at what we call weather minimal level which is about 300 meters.

Matazu explained that the era of aircraft divertion as a result of of poor visibility was over with the successful calibration of the CAT 3 ILS in some major airports, adding that the problem was as a result of lack of calibration then.

“Actually, the main challenge that time was the calibration of the CAT3 ILS which has been successfully done in all the major airports.

“So, with this, we don’t normally expect such. We work in harmony with all the aviation agencies and specially for NAMA, they directly consume our services”

“Even in JFK (New York) they could be such poor weather conditions that could make flight delays. So, we should expect that in the country, so that they would despite whatever instrumentation serviceability status that you have, they could be such level that it requires certain bad weather.

“Especially you know that in the atmosphere where you don’t have parking space”

The Nimet boss explained that the dry season was associated with influx of dust from the Lake Chad and parts of Niger which normally comes with a strange wind impaired vision by truncating the clear vision.

Matazu explained that principally in aviation it caused visibility issues with horizontal visibility on the threshold that required for smooth landing and takeoff.

“so, this season is associated with poor visibility. And when the visibility is so poor that you cannot have a clear horizontal vision and some airports will have delays takeoffs and landing of aircraft and sometimes extending to the night time when they can use the lighting of the runway”