The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) has upgraded pilot briefing rooms in Lagos and Abuja airports.
Director-General (DG) of the agency, Prof. Mansur Matazu, at the receipt of an ATQ award in Lagos recently, urged airlines, pilots and crew members to always approach the briefing rooms for proper updates.
Matazu said: “Even though we provide some of these services via e-mail, in the briefing, they (pilots and crew) 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 very useful feedback.
“In there, we do what we call forecast evaluation and they (pilots and crew) evaluate what is given to them. So, we encourage them to always visit the briefing rooms of NIMET,” he said.
The DG added that the agency was also deploying runway visual range; an additional aid vision machine, along the runway, which can allow aircraft to land and take-off even at weather minimal level of about 300 metres.
Matazu explained that the era of aircraft diversion to another airport as a result of poor visibility was over with the successful calibration of the CAT 3 Instrument Landing System (ILS) in some major airports.
“Actually, the main challenge, at 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 expect such. We work in harmony with all the aviation agencies and especially for NAMA, they directly consume our services.”
