ARUSHA AIRPORT TO OPERATE 24 HOURS DAILY

Arusha airport which usually operates only when there is daylight will soon be upgraded to operate 24 hours daily.

The  Director General for the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority, Hamza Johari has said the TCAA is bracing  to install taxiing lights on the Arusha Airport runway and also at Mbeya airport in the Southern Highlands.

The TCAA will also be installing four new radars at the country’s major airports within the current fiscal year.

Tanzania is  also joining Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and South-Sudan in creating a Unified Flight Information Region.

The six East African Community member states will thus be operating from a single area control center in tandem with the ongoing implementation of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Pilot Study recommendations aimed at making the region safer for civil aviation operations.

Arusha Airport to operate 24 hours. (File photo).

This  was stated by the EAC Secretary General, Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko during the recent High Level Forum between China and the East African Community on the Air Traffic Management (ATM) held in Arusha.

Tanzania is among the five East African Community countries working to make its airspace safer in line with the International Civil Aviation Organization plan through investing in the implementation of the Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU).

That was among the issues that came up for discussions in the High Level China and East African Community Forum on the Air Traffic Management. 

The forum was organized and facilitated by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and China Electronic Technology Group Corporation (CETC). “We also plan to establish Air Traffic Management Academies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania),” revealed the Chief Operations and Financial Officer of CETC, Mr Zhang Dengh Zhou.

The ASBU concept focuses on four performance improvement areas: airport operations; global interoperable systems and data; optimum capacity and flexible flights; efficient flight paths. ASBUs outline the air and ground equipment and timelines for standards and procedures implementation.

The Civil Aviation Authority Director General, explained during the ATM meeting  that the authority has invested nearly 18 billion/- for the project.

With the new radars to be installed at the Julius Nyerere International airport  in Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro International Airport, Mwanza and Mbeya airports, Tanzania  will be able to monitor the entire country’s airspace,” Johari said.

In a speech read on his behalf by Mr Philip Wambugu, the EAC Director of Infrastructure, the Community Secretary General, Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko said the East African Community is currently the lead Regional Economic Community in matters of Civil Aviation due to collaborative projects and programmes supported and implemented by the Partner States. 

Aviation experts say the African civil aviation scene is five times riskier in terms of aviation accidents than the international average thus the urgent need to address all factors behind such accidents and incidences including those related to air navigation and traffic management deficiencies.