Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika has said palliatives to the aviation industry will be announced as soon as next week as the sector inches towards restart.
He made this known at a Press briefing held with the presidential task force on covid-19 after a test flight from Abuja to Lagos to ensure everything is in place for the restart.
Speaking on the restart, Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika said aviation was ready to go.
“Ninety percent of what we do in civil aviation is not seen by people like the Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range ( VOR) and other safety systems put in place but aviation is ready, I don’t want to give a timeline but when we are set to open, we open.
On palliatives, the minister said in conjunction with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Finance the amount for the palliative will be announced soon.
Government is coming with the palliative very soon in conjunction with the CBN and the Ministry of Finance, by next week we will come out with the amount and palliative will be announced within the week. Within the economic sustainability plan, it will go round the entire civil aviation but may not be necessarily structured like people expect.”
Meanwhile, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has expressed satisfaction with the handling of the test flight from Abuja ahead of the restart plan of the aviation industry stating that the industry is ready but will not give a timeline or date for restart
Sani Aliyu, the coordinator PTF COVID-19, who gave his assessment when he arrived with the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika on an aero contractors flight from Abuja after undergoing the same process at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport.
He said,” Aviation is a highly regulated sector and this is the new normal. Things have changed and things have changed because we have a disease killing people.
The aviation industry industry has shown what they have done as an industry and now it is left to Nigerians to do what they need to be safe.
“While aviation has done tremendously well, what will protect you is yourself and we equally will make sure Nigerians can be safe when they fly.
However, Air Peace, in a show of strength and readiness to resume operations, littered the Nigerian airspace with several of its fleets of aircraft in shakedown flights.
It should be recalled that the airline has a mixed fleet of 25 aircraft which includes three wide body aircraft, the Boeing 777s.
All the aircraft took to the skies flying to Abuja, Port Harcourt and back to Lagos without passengers
These flights were aimed at ensuring that the aircraft are in tip-top condition, having been grounded for close to three months though they have been under very strict storage maintenance.
Stanley Olisa, the Spokesperson of the airline, who revealed this in a statement to journalists, said the shakedown flights are part of the measures the airline has developed to guarantee the safety of both passengers and crew when operations resume.
He noted that the aircraft have been in storage mode for a couple of months and extensive maintenance checks have been carried out to keep them up to the required standards.
According to Olisa: “Within this period of flight ban, we have ramped up technical maintenance of all our aircraft, scaled up cabin refresh and carried out thorough disinfection to ensure they remain fit for the skies when the authorities flag off operations”. He added that the aircraft are now being brought out of storage and the pilots have been testing them, stressing that all pilots and flight attendants have been retrained in line with NCAA directives.
On the airline’s readiness to resume regular flights, he stated: “As you know, we have been operating ‘special flights’ to local and international destinations, and we have more of such flights in the works. This accentuates our preparedness for operation restart as our pilots, cabin crew and engineers have been hands-on and are very current. So, we are hundred percent ready to resume”.
