…To Get Airport Emergency Training School Soon
Posted by Sade Williams
The Rector/ Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Captain Mohammed Abdulsalami has said that the college will continue do its training through virtual learning in compliance until an approval that it is safe to reopen the institution is received from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
He disclosed this at a virtual meeting titled, “Impact of COVID-19 for Aviation Training in Africa and moderated by the founder of Young African Aviation Professionals (YAAPA), Fadimatou Noutchemo.
He also disclosed the management was on the verge of establishing Airport Emergency Training School to boost its training capacity, in addition to the five schools NCAT already had.
He said the creation of Airport Emergency Training School would bring to six the number of schools in the college.
“At NCAT we, the management agreed to commence virtual learning for the knowledge based courses like Aviation Law and others. We started virtual learning and have been on it for 10 weeks now. The virtual learning is the new normal post-COVID and it has come to stay.”
On the resumption of training by the school, the Rector disclosed that it has submitted its restart plans to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as an Approved Training Organisations (ATO) and that it was waiting for the regulator’s assessment and approval before fixing its resumption date.
He added that on resumption the use of facemasks by staff, students, visitors, physical /social distancing in the classrooms, hostels and cafeteria would be strictly enforced.
“There will be new procedures for pilots when they train in groups, there will 20 students per class for social distancing,” he said.
“We are looking at operation with COVID-19. The NCAA has issued guidelines to Approved Training Organisations (ATO) for restart on training and we have done a plan and submitted and are waiting for their assessment so we can announce a restart date.
“Like I said we have submitted a restart plan with the NCAA, so they have to send a team. Once, they are satisfied they will give us the green light so we can set a date. We already have a target date but we cannot make it public until the verification is done. We do not want to give out a date and then change it later, which would look bad,” he said.
“COVID-19 pandemic started earlier in the year and has affected aviation more than any sector in the world and Nigeria is no different. We had to suspend training late March and we thought it would be for a while but due to the current happenings and advice by our government, we have to shut down and realize COVID-19 is here so we need to live with it and gradually restart our economy,” he said.
On creating a new school; Airport Emergency Training School, the Rector, said that the college has bought some of the equipment including fire simulator that would also be useful for cabin crew for training.
“We have five schools, Aircraft Maintenance, Aviation Management School, Air Traffic Controller Communication School, Aeronautical Telecommunications School and Flying School .We are presently in the process of adding a sixth school; Airport Emergency Training School which we have installed fire training simulator for that purpose.
“This equipment simulates 32 fire scenarios and we will inculcate part of our cabin crew training in that simulator”, he added.
