In this interview with NewsGazette, the rector of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Capt. Abdulsalami Mohammed speaks on acquisition of trainer and simulation aircraft for the college, accreditation of the institution by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as a training centre of excellence, sustainability of the status, benefits of the certification, surfeit of pilots and ageing workforce in the aviation industry, among some other issues.
Ime Akpan
Acquisition of trainer aircraft
The approval we have from the government is to acquire 20 Diamond aircraft; five of which are the two engines DA42 and 15 Assembly engine DA40 aircraft. When I assumed office in 2017, we took delivery of one DA42 aircraft in April. The college placed orders for additional aircraft, but we were informed by the contractors that the Diamond aircraft company was bought over by another company and that new owner decided to relocate the production line from Austria to Canada. They told us that they won’t be able to produce another aircraft until nine to 10 months, which is when the assembly line would have been completely relocated.
That is what affected the delivery of the additional aircraft because we asked for additional four DA40 aircraft, which is what we have on order now. That company is up and running in Canada now and we expect to take delivery of those four DA 40 aircraft before the end of this year. We also have additional DA 40 aircraft that was given to the college by an insurance company as part of insurance settlement. So, by the time we have the four aircraft delivered, we will have one DA42 and five DA40.
As of today, we have eight aircraft that are serviceable. These aircraft are not the same; we have the basic, advance and two engines ones. So, depending on the stage of training of students, some of the aircraft that are serviceable may not be useful to fresh students who need the basic and less complex aircraft and then they advance to more complex aircraft, with more instrument flying before they go into the multi-engine aircraft.
Sometimes, when you start with the new students, the multi-engine aircraft is actually parked and not doing anything until the students reach that time they can start multi-engine training.
Acquisition of Boeing737 simulation aircraft
The initial plan for the Boeing 737 simulator aircraft was for it to be based in Lagos when the contract was awarded, but when this administration came into power, they took the decision to relocate it to Zaria. As we speak, the simulator is being installed in Zaria. So, when that decision was made we had to move because the contract didn’t include the housing of the simulator. The contract was for acquisition and installation of Boeing 737GN simulator. So, we looked at our existing facilities if they were adequate enough to house the simulator. But the simulator manufacturer after seeing the dimension said the building was inadequate and when we looked at the cost of modifying and building another one to accommodate the simulator, we had to make an arrangement to build a new complex that will house the simulator. So, we have to start the process from the scratch. We have to get consultants, get the plan approved by the manufacturer before we could go forward. We had to go to the federal executive council for the contract to be awarded. It was only last year that we got FEC approval for the building. We have awarded the contract and it is our belief that the building would be completed and the simulator installed this year.
The simulator has been constructed, but it is there waiting for shipment; it is too big to enter a container. The simulator is very sensitive to temperature and humidity and all the parts were made by Boeing. We believe that the stimulator would be would be installed this year.
In addition, we have another simulator that is being installed in Zaria for this year. The simulator is for firemen. It is automatic fire simulator. As you may be aware, we have never had fire simulator in Nigeria in spite of the number of firemen that we have in this country. All these years, we have been sending our firemen to Cameroon for training. So, this administration felt it is more economical for us to have our own simulator here in Nigeria and the decision was taken to house it here because we have the land. The simulator is being built in the United Kingdom.
As you know, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has gotten firemen in every airport and you can imagine the number of firemen that requires training and re-training. We also expect people from the Federal Fire Service to make use of this simulator. We also intend to incorporate some of our cabin crew training into the use of this simulator because you can simulate cabin fire, cabin smoke, lavatory smoke and the likes with this equipment. So, it is very ideal for us to have it here in Zaria.
NCAT as an RCTE
The Regional Training Centre of Excellence (RTCE) has given NCAT more visibility worldwide. For instance, I was in China last December and a Chinese man asked me where I worked and immediately I mentioned NCAT, he said ‘oh, RTCE’. There are just few RTCEs in the world and it takes a lot of efforts and processes before any institution is recognsied as an RTCE. Now, when you have this status, it affords you the opportunity to develop courses in all the ICAO Annexes. We can also import courses from any part of the world that are ICAO-approved and conduct them here. With RTCE, the sky is actually the limit for us as we can run any course. Right now, we have some foreign students in the college; some from Cameroon, some from The Gambia who are doing training and we expect more.
I am supposed to meet with the representatives of the Western and Central African Region of ICAO. The countries that are in this region have headquarters in Dakar. They have indicated interest in whatever NCAT is doing. I am supposed to have a meeting with them on the training opportunities here at the college. A lot of them that I met recently had this misconception that Zaria is insecure and that is the main reason they are reluctant to come. We have come to a great length to convince them that Zaria is totally safe. We have had a lot of foreigners coming and going. Some of these people claimed that it is their embassies that tell them that Zaria is not safe, but we are making efforts to disabuse people’s minds in this regard.
Sustaining the RTCE status
ICAO that gives you the RTCE status has a lot of expectations from you. There are a lot of things you have to do to retain the status and if you don’t do, they will yank it off you. One of such is that you have to develop ICAO Training Package (ITP); you have to be able to train people from outside the country. It is for the region; you are not a local organisation.
During the certification process, you are required to develop a certain number of other training packages. The minimum requirement to qualify as an RTCE is three; it used to be one and we were the first to go to three when it was changed from one to three. At the time that NCAT became an RTCE, we developed six standard training packages and we hope to develop additional three packages before the end of this year.
Right now, we are about one of the institutions with the highest number of packages developed, which is what has been acknowledged by ICAO in their reports to the president of the council. There are lots of things that we are doing and we are up to the task of sustaining this RTCE status.
Collaboration with BABCOCK University, other institutions
We don’t have any collaboration with BABCOCK, but we are making a lot of efforts to collaborate with some of the universities around. I just returned from Tunisia and I was actually asked to join the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) team between Nigeria and Tunisia, at the request of Tunisia. Tunisia wants a representative of NCAT to be part of the team because the country wants to collaborate with the institution. So, we are making efforts on this issue. We had the vice chancellor of Macdonald University with us in 2018 and they want to set up an aircraft maintenance engineering school there and they have approached us for help in seeing this dream become to reality.
Pilots, engineers churned out annually
On the average, it takes about two years to train a pilot and an engineer. So, it is not on annual basis that we graduate these types of trainees. By ICAO standards, there is a limit to the number of students we can have in a class, but for management and other courses, we are allowed to have huge number of students in a class. For a typical pilot class, we limit the number to 20 in a class; the same thing applies to engineers. Sometimes, in a year, we have three engineering courses staggered, starting at different periods, but they can’t be more than 20 in a class.
This problem of ageing workforce in aviation industry, ICAO recognizes this and that is why it has come up with a new set of aviation professionals called Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) programme and NCAT has signed up to this. We have been attending all the NGAP summits since they started.
At the local level, we have a team that is responsible for this. The team goes out and reaches out to secondary school students with the aim of catching them young. As ICAO and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said, there is going to be severe shortage of pilots in the coming years based on the aircraft orders and the ageing workforce. So, there is a need for us to start early and that is why we are starting it at the secondary school level. We have teams that go out for career talks in secondary schools and later this year, we intend to have an open day, which will be dedicated to secondary school students and they will be opened to a lot of opportunities in the sector.
Pilot glut and ageing workforce
I have actually lost tracked of the numbers of pilots that are unemployed in this country. Some say it is 500 and others come out with different figures. In fact, when some of them get jobs, they don’t remember to remove their names from those unemployed.
The issue of unemployment of pilots is not common to Nigeria. As you know, NCAT is a council member of the Association of African Approved Training Organisation (AAATO). We hold two council meetings yearly and at every meeting, we discuss this pilot unemployment. Some countries have different requirements for pilots. A lot of these countries, you need to have certain requirements of experience as a pilot before you can fly in the airline industry. For instance, in the United States, you have to have a minimum of 1,500 hours as a pilot before you can fly and join the likes of United and American Airlines and others.
So, when pilots come out of school, they join commuter airlines, go into general aviation. Some stay to work in the flying school as instructors and build their experience to get the required hours before they are qualified to get the required hours to work in the airline industry. Same thing applies to South Africa. You need to have that flying hours.
Fortunately for us in Nigeria, we don’t have that requirement and the airlines on their own may have certain requirements based on their own procedure manuals where they may have the need for a certain experience for their brands of aircraft for insurance purposes before they can employ their pilots. From time, the practice has always been that when they finish from school, they will be qualified to fly the type of aircraft that we are flying here. So, when they go to look for work, as long as it is the same aircraft brand they get, they won’t need additional training, but if it is another brand of aircraft, they have to go for type-training.
On the use of expatriate pilots, the government has said it several times that as long as a qualified Nigerian is here on the ground, it would not approve a foreigner to do the job in Nigeria. For instance, if an airline introduces new equipment, there may not be local pilots to operate that equipment and as a stop gap, you have to bring in qualified people anywhere you can get to start utilizing the aircraft.
For instance, Air Peace bought a number of Embraer 45 and before then, very few Embraer 45s were flying in Nigeria, which means that very few Nigerians had that type-rating. A number of that aircraft was parked because we had no pilots. So, the airline had to bring a number of foreigners to fly the aircraft till such a time their own people they are training are qualified to take over. It is a common practice in the industry.
Off-campus PGD progarmme
NCAT is not going to have a campus in Lagos; if you remember this administration suspended all work for campuses outside Zaria for the college. Rather, we are concentrating on developing NCAT first before moving anywhere. We have a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a sister organisation in Lagos that has training school. We hope to use their training facilities and send the instructors to Lagos to conduct this.
As part of our efforts to expand our clients’ base and increase our internally generated revenue (IGR), we have two teams, which are called Reach Teams to interact with the airlines and other industry players on their training needs. A lot of them showed interests in the courses that we are running here, but the major constraint is that they don’t want to leave Lagos. For these courses that we will be running outside Lagos, we intend to be running them on a regular basis. That way, we also have some aircraft engineers who have indicated interest in running some of these Higher National Diploma (HND) programmes that we have been accredited to do. They have indicated interest in doing those programmes. So, you will be seeing some of these programmes being run out of Lagos in the near future.
Renovation of hostels
We are doing this in phases. Right now, we have about 95 per cent of our hostels occupied. So, if you are going to remove one block for renovation, it’s going to affect our student population. So, we are doing it in phases. It is a project that is funded by the government…to renovate existing hostels. We also had approval to build 100-bed male hostels and 150-bed female hostels. We have had proposal on public-private partnership (PPP) to build hostels in the college, but we are still in talks with the company that is bringing the proposal because it is unsolicited.
When the two simulators are up and running, there will be the need for quality accommodation for the calibre of clients that will require the simulators.
