ASSESSEMENT OF CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY REGULATIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study set out to assess civil aviation safety regulations in Nigeria by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). The Nigerian civil aviation is faced with challenges relating to safety regulations and poor compliance to the existing regulations. There is irregularity in vital maintenance checks such as the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance checks as stipulated in their maintenance programme guide. This has resulted in a lot of air transport mishap in Nigeria. The research objectives were channeled to look at aviation safety standards, compliance and enforcement in Nigeria from 2001 to 2018, taking into consideration the number of air transport licenses that had been issued within the year in view. It also seek to know frequency at which the mandatory safety maintenance checks were done on aircraft and the number of air crashes attributed to poor maintenance. Secondary data was used for this research work. The data were collected from Directorate of Air Transport Regulations (DATR), Directorate of Airworthiness Standards (DAWS), legal department in Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) headquarter and annex office and Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) in Ikeja Lagos state Nigeria. The Research work made use of various descriptive statistical tools in analyzing the data collected. The result of the findings are as follows; from objective 1, it was observed that operational regulation violations were the highest with 28%, airworthiness violations with 18% and the others followed. From objective 2, it was observed that the number of expired licenses issued by Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) was high, most especially air travel organizer’s license ATOL, one of the reasons for the increase is that some of the airlines are no longer in operation. Objective 3 dealt with the frequency of mandatory safety maintenance checks, the result shows that there was reduction in the checks most especially between 2006 to 2010 in almost all the airlines observed and their aircraft most especially the daily checks. From objective 4, it was revealed that mechanical factors with up to 100% in 2007 and 2013, the highest aircraft crashes were 13 in 2005 and 2013. The study thereby recommends that NCAA should ensure that all aircraft undergo the stipulated maintenance checks, workshops and seminars should be organized on the importance checks and there should be proper follow-up on licenses/permit to avoid cases of expired licenses.