Poor weather conditions and flight operations: Implications for air transport hazard management in Nigeria

Abstract

The growth of aviation industry in Nigeria and the increased adoption of air transportation as one of the best means of transport have been obstructed by various weather hazards. There is a greater need for aviation weather forecasters to deliver quality forecasts. It is therefore necessary to identify the most dangerous and most common weather hazards which are detrimental to the aviation industry so as to enhance the expertise on addressing them. This paper examined various weather hazards which  include thunderstorm, fog, dust haze and line squall that affect flight operation such as flight delays, diversion and cancellation. The study revealed that fog accounted for 13.2% of flight cancellation at the airport and line squall similarly accounted for 10.1% of delays, 8.4% of diversion and 20% of cancellation from 2000-2009 at the airport. The paper recommends that with the aid of improved forecasting tools such as Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) and Radar network which provides different images of clouds every fifteen minutes, it becomes much easier to identify dangerous clouds and give prior warning to the aviation industry.

Key Words: Flight operation, Cancellation, Diversion, Line squall, Fog, Thunderstorm