No Boeing 737 Max 8 Owned By Nigerian Airlines, Says NCAA

By Uche Mbah

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA has allayed fears of possible air crash involving the Boeing model following the crash of Ethiopian Airline Flight 302 minutes after take off, killing all passengers on board.

As a result of the crash, many countries either grounded their Aircraft pending investigations, or ordered for immediate checks on the Airline.  At least 114 planes have been grounded worldwide, with China leading with 97 planes. The groundings  has posed many administrative and logistic bottlenecks for such airlines, resulting in flight cancellations, loss of revenue and may end up in series of litigation.

But the General Manager, Public Relations, NCAA, Sam Adurogboye, described such reactions as panic measures, insisting that the countries should wait for the investigations into the cause of the crash before taking such hasty actions. According to him, “there is no cause for alarm. Presently, the accident aircraft type, Boeing 737 max 8, is not in operation in the country”.

This magazine reported that Air Peace has ordered ten units of the aircraft in question from Boeing, guaranteed by fidelity Bank. This is expected to boost the number of aircraft to 37.But Chris Uwarah, Corporate Communications Manager, Air Peace, according to agency reports, insisted that cancelling the order will be “premature”, noting that before they can take delivery of the aircraft, issues surrounding the crash would have been resolved. Adurogboye has said it takes about four years to supply orders from Boeing.

Arik air also has ordered for eight units, but has not taken delivery of any.

By January this year, 5011 orders were made for max 8, and 350 units were delivered, showing that delivery could be from a few months to several years, depending on demand.

Many countries expressed full confidence on the aircraft-particularly American operators South west company and American Airline group-insisting that while they closely monitor the situation, they will not ground the fleet. Others like south Korea ordered emergency tests.