Near air accidents worry aviation authorities

Air misses are near collision between two airborne aircraft which may be as a result of poor separation on the part of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) or bad weather situation.

An impeccable industry source disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that there had been many air misses in the recent times, a development that had begun to give the authorities of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) a serious concern.

While a section of the industry heaped the blame of the near accidents on the poor state of the radar currently in use, many also believed that the problem might not be unconnected with the present bad weather and the single runway currently in use at the Murtala Mohammed Airport (MMA) in Lagos.

A source among the air traffic controllers, who would not want his name mentioned, told the Nigerian Tribune that the air misses, particularly at the Lagos airport, were almost becoming a daily occurrence, a development which, he said, had become a source of worry for authorities at both the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the NCAA.

The last of such occurrence, according to the source, was on Thursday when two aircraft would have collided but for mother luck which averted the tragedy.

It will be recalled that a Chanchangi airplane almost collided with a foreign airline, KLM, in Lagos about three weeks ago. The development caused attention to be focused on the functionality or otherwise of the Lagos radar recently.