The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) said on Sunday that it has successfully split the Lagos Sub-Flight Information Region (Sub-FIR) airspace into two sectors: Lagos West Area Control Centre on 120.9MHz radio frequency and Lagos East Area Control Centre on 127.3MHz frequency.

The sectorization brings relief to pilots who have complained about congestion in trying to establish contact with the control tower within the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), the nation’s busiest gateways, in Lagos.

To enhance the quality of air traffic services in the country, the sectorization, which took off last Thursday, according to NAMA, was “a culmination of a two-year strategic plan by the agency to achieve sectored operations in the Lagos sub-FIR owing to the then congested single radio frequency enroute control operations.”

The Managing Director of NAMA, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu, who briefed stakeholders on the new improvement, disclosed that the planned sectorization of Lagos had been in place for over 16 years.

According to him, it took the commitment and determination of staff to see to its actualization. He said sectorizing Lagos became imperative owing to the increasing volume of traffic and the attendant challenges posed to both pilots and air traffic controllers. He said, in a bid to achieve the feat, the agency had put in place several measures to ensure its effective takeoff.

The MD listed the benefits of sectorization to include reduction in congestion on the available en-route control radio frequency, reduction of flight delays; reduction in fuel consumption, reduction in CO2 emission, as well as increasing air traffic management (ATM) capacity.

He said sectorizing the Lagos Area Control Centre (ACC) would bring about optimum utilization of the airspace by reducing controller-pilot workload, thereby increasing efficiency and quality of service delivery.

As part of the process, Akinkuotu revealed that two (2) new procedural control flight progress boards with two (2) controller working positions for the East and West sectors had also been provided to ensure proper ergonomics at the Lagos Area Control Centre. (Daily Trust)