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NCAA commences financial audit of domestic airlines, vows to ensure safety

L:R: DG NCAA Capt. Musa Nuhu and GM Public Affairs, NCAA, Mr. Sam Adurogboye at the news conference in Lagos.

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA says, it has commenced full scale financial and economy audit on all domestic airlines to ascertain their strength and status in ensuring safe air operations in the country.

Director General, NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu who disclosed this at a news conference in Lagos said, the audit would be in phases.

Acknowledging the current challenges domestic airlines were grappling with on a daily basis due to the acute and skyrocketing price of aviation fuel, Captain Nuhu said, safety must be ensured to avoid double jeopardy in the industry.

According to him, safety was paramount and any airline that can no longer carryout a safe operations would be shut down.

“Anything that affects safety there would be no compromise whatsoever, I rather shut down an airline than letting them operate unsafely, it is better we have inconvenience of passengers getting angry and saying all sorts of things than having an unfortunate accident and incident”.

He stated that, the problem of aviation fuel and lack of access to forex were not within the purview of the regulatory agency but assured that, all hands were on deck by the Ministries of aviation, finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN to make dollars required by local airline operators available.

On the soaring airfares, Captain Nuhu said, the current crisis in the industry was of grave concern but any airline who charge beyond the base fare would be called to order.

“I have asked for increase airfares for DHR to look at, is it within that range, if it is not within that range then we call the airline and discuss with them and we resolve the matter”.

The NCAA boss also assured that, talks were ongoing with foreign airlines who have cut down on capacity into Nigeria due to their trapped funds in the CBN.

He said, the action of the foreign airlines cannot be condemned as the unhindered remittance of ticket sales was part of the signed Bilateral Air Services Agreement, BASA.

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