Air traffic engineers call for equipment replacement, manpower.

The National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE) has called on the federal government to take advantage of technological revolution and advancement in global aviation community and deploy new navigational aids (NAVAIDS) equipment with spare parts to replace the geriatric ones.
The president and secretary of NAAE, Messrs Ebenezer Makanjuola and Francis Omeje, said in a statement jointly signed by them that called for the engagement of more manpower to enhance seamless operations in the country.
According to NAAE, NAVAIDS facilities deployed by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) rank among the best and operated in accordance with internationally recommended standard and procedures.
They pledged to continue to ensure the optional performance of the equipment irrespective of their locations in order to achieve credibility and reliability of the facilities and safety of the country’s airspace.
The engineers noted that government in the past few years continually embarked on massive deployment of air navigation equipment adding that as managers of the equipment, they (equipment) are serviceable, fully functional and reliable to the end users.
The engineers said they were fully involved in skill deployment within available resources in ensuring the success of the ongoing Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) automation project and controller pilot data link connection of NAMA.
They said the association was aware of misleading information perpetrated by some group of agitators aimed at frustrating government effort in providing state- of-the-art navigational facilities.