Apparently worried by the rising air travels incidents across the nation’s airports in recent weeks, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, has summoned heads of aviation regulatory agencies to an emergency meeting to parley on the worrisome development in the industry.
The minister’s invitation to the industry’s chiefs for the meeting came barely 24 hours after a Lagos-Abuja bound airline, the United Nigeria Airline, diverted the trip to Asaba airport in Delta State for landing on Sunday, citing poor weather conditions as the reason for the action.
The flight, NUA 0504, took off on Sunday from the Muritala Muhammed International Airport, Terminal 2, Lagos, for Abuja but the pilot landed the aircraft at the Asaba International Airport, causing some confusion among the passengers.
In the past two weeks, there had been three runway incidents that occurred in two international airports, thereby bringing the total number of such incidents this year to over 10
Keyamo maintained that a thorough assessment of recent incidents would be carried out during the meeting.
Justifying his action, the minister wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) handle that “due to safety concerns in the aviation sector expressed by members of the public, I have summoned the heads of the regulatory agencies to my office later today to review the incidents that are the causes of these concerns, and to ensure that appropriate steps are taken to forestall future occurrence and to apply sanctions, where necessary, regarding the past incidents.”
