The Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Fidelia Njeze, on Monday, said that the second runway of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, would be completed and made ready for night operations by January 2011.
The minister’s comment came two years after the government promised that the runway, also known as the domestic runway, would be ready for night flights.
The government had about four years ago embarked on the total rehabilitation of the domestic runway of the airport.
The initial civil works were completed in December 2008. However, the fixing of the Air Field Lighting, which will aid night flights had suffered several setbacks.
Domestic airlines have been complaining of losing billions of naira in revenue to fuel marketers due to the delay of their aircraft in the airport’s airspace.
The delay, according to them, is as a result of congestion on the international runway at night.
But, Njeze, in an interview with journalists in Lagos, said the Air Field Lighting equipment, which would be fixed on the domestic runway, had arrived the country from overseas.
Consequently, she said that the government had begun discussions with the contractor with a view to working out the modalities for fixing the equipment.
She said, “The timeline for it, once we start, will not be more than three months. The equipment are on the ground, the contractors are on the ground, but we have to also look at the operational issues.
“We have to be careful because operations are going on; we are going to open up, we are going to do civil works, so it is going to affect airlines’ operations. We are being careful, we are trying to manage it; so, that is the modality we are trying to straighten out.”
Since the completion of initial civil works on the runway in 2008, airlines had been using the domestic runway for only day light operations. Night operations are being restricted to runway 18L, also known as the international runway.
The minister, however, explained that the delay in the fixing of the AFL was caused by the mistake the government made during the award of the contract.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201010262314748
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