The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has migrated to automation for the processing of Air Operators’ Certificate (AOC) for intending carriers and existing airlines. The civil aviation regulatory body migrated to automation after years of processing the AOC documents manually.
Capt. Roland Iyayi, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), at the 27th annual conference of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) recently, had canvassed for automation of AOC processes, saying that the manual processes were archaic.
Iyayi had challenged the regulatory agency to take a cue from Europe, America and other parts of the world where manual procedures have been jettisoned for automation. He specifically complained about the volume of papers required and the time constraints intending airlines have to go through before acquiring AOC.
However, Capt. Musa Nuhu, the Director-General Civil Aviation (DGCA), in one of his recent interactions with aviation journalists, expressed that the NCAA was migrating most of its procedures to electronic gradually. A statement signed by Nuhu recently and made available to journalists, said the NCAA had adopted electronic processes for AOC acquisition and directed all intending airlines and existing carriers to follow the new procedures.
Nuhu emphasised that that the regulatory body had enhanced AOC Operations Specifications (Op.Specs) to all current AOC holders. According to him, the directive was contained in an All Operator Letter (AOL) referenced NCAA/DG/AIR/11/16/370, dated August 18, 2023 and is applicable to all AOC holders certificated by the authority.
NCAA had published the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulations (Nig. CARs) 2023, which came into effect on July 10, 2023 and Subsection 9.1.1.7 of Nig. CARs Part 9, the NCAA redesigned the layout and format of the Operations Specifications associated with the AOC.
The statement added: “These new and enhanced multi-paged Op.Specs contain the authorizations, conditions, limitations and approvals issued by the Authority in accordance with the standards which are applicable to operations and maintenance conducted by the AOC holder. “In view of the above directive, all AOC holders are required to electronically complete the appropriate pages of the attached Op.Specs and return same to the NCAA via only email addresses indicated below on or before August 23, 2023.”
He directed the operators to send the appropriate pages to Chairman, Flight Standards Group (FSG), Engr. Godwin Balang, Director, Operations, Licensing and Training Standards (DOLTS), Capt. Ibrahim Dambazau and Director, Airworthiness Standards (DAWS), Engr. Gbolahan Abatan.