Azman Airline management disown protest letter to NCAA DG, Aero Contractors plane suffers bird strike

Azman  Airline management has disowned  a protest letter to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, after the regulatory authority suspended the flight operations of the airline to enable it carry out safety audit of the airline fleet of Being planes. Meanwhile  Aero Contractors airlines plane on a scheduled flight from Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano to Lagos suffered bird strike. According to an eyewitness who said he was at the Kano airport when the incident happened, ” the aircraft  with about 100 passengers on board had been airborne for about 15 minutes when the pilot announced a problem in one of the its engines and contacted the Kano airport control tower that he was returning to Kano airport”. The eyewitness who does not want to be named, further said the plane landed safely with no casualty. On landing, the engines were checked by engineers after the pilot reported that “a bird had struck the engine’. The plane  is still at the Kano airport for further examination and necessary action as at the time of filing this report. Bird strikes are regular occurrence in flight operations. This is more prevalent in airports where there are overgrown bushes and grasses that attract birds. Airports with abattoirs near their vicinity also experience constant bird strikes.

In the Azman protest letter which went viral online,  the Director General, NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu was accused of unprofessionalism and extortion. Reacting to the protest letter allegedly issued by the airline and addressed to  NCAA , the Accountable Manager of my Azman Air, Muhammad Abdulmunaf,  said in a statement that the letter didn’t emanate from them and is a “deliberate falsehood targeted at discrediting the the DG and the airline.” Muhammad said : ” We wish to state categorically that the recent publication making  the rounds in the media in which an attack purported to be masterminded by Azman Air in reaction to NCAA’s suspension of its operations was launched on the integrity of the NCAA DG, Captain Musa Nuhu never came from Azman Air. “We had our request for expatriate pilots turned down but this has nothing to do with the integrity of the DG as a person as other airlines were so treated, hence we have decided to conduct an internal investigation to find out the source of the letter.

“How could we allege extortion against the DG for requesting that we pay for an advert featuring Azman Air in an ICAO magazine when the said payment wasn’t for him but for the publishers? That we didn’t pay as and when due wasn’t a sign of refusal to pay but an innocent oversight on our part. How could we have alleged any wrong doing against the DG for carrying out his duties? It is within his core mandate to take the decision he took suspending the operations of our 737s and we are not unaware of the very high premium the agency under him places on safety.”

“We are leaving no stone unturned in our resolve to fish out the authors of this falsehood calculated to damage our rating. We wish to state that that Azman Air is willing to corporate fully with its investigations of our operations as safety is our watchword,” Abdulmunaf added. NCAA  had last week suspended Azman Air’s operations citing safety concerns after the airline suffered three serious incidents in six weeks.  After the protest letter allegedly issued by Azman Air was made public,  NCAA addressed all the issues raised in the letter and made it clear ” it was cheap blackmail ” the regulator will not succumb to.