AIMAN makes case for special intervention fund, training to facilitate automation

AERONAUTICAL Information Management Association of Nigeria (AIMAN) has called on the Federal Government to approve special intervention fund to speed up the completion of AIS automation in order to ensure enhanced safety and efficiency in the Nigerian airspace.

Since the commencement of the AIS Automation project in the year 2000, the project is said to have attained 60% completion, a situation stakeholders have described not good for safety.

President of AIMAN, Surv. William George Ngere who made this call in his opening speech at the 2019 World AIS Day held in Lagos regretted that despite the importance of AIS to air safety, the aeronautical Message Handling system, AMHS, which was the gateway that the AIS Automation would ride on had been discovered that the factory acceptance test was yet to be carried out.

“The database is the bedrock for all the systems that will be used in generating Aeronautical Information products and this is extremely critical to the success of the AIS Automation project. The integrated database is based on the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model,AIXM.

Ngere equally made a case for more trainings of AIS personnel towards the transition from Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) to Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) to meet the required standards.

According to him, out of 245 AIS personnel in Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), only 13 AIS staff were trained on the Avitech Software (AMHS/AIS Course-8; AIM and structured publishing training-5), against the average 200 personnel required to run the automation.

“There is therefore a serious need for more trainings of AIS personnel towards the transition from AIS to AIM to meet the required standards. A conducive working environment is equally crucial to the automation project as this will play a key role in ensuring the highest performance and professionalism of personnel”.