Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Director-General Captain Muhtar Usman said the country closed out 2017 without a single accident involving a commercial scheduled flight, matching the same record achieved in 2016. Speaking to reporters in Lagos, Usman said the only incidents recorded during the year involved aircraft on the tarmac rather than in flight, and credited the outcome to sustained safety programmes, training, surveillance and inspections carried out across the industry.
Usman also said Nigeria had retained its Category One safety rating from the United States Federal Aviation Administration during the year, a certification he described as harder to sustain than to attain in the first place. He said lessons drawn from accident reports in prior years had helped deepen safety programmes across Nigerian carriers and regulatory agencies.
Part of a Record Global Year
Nigeria's safety record for 2017 came in a year that the Aviation Safety Network, a Netherlands-based body affiliated with the Flight Safety Foundation, would go on to describe as the safest year in commercial aviation history worldwide, with no fatal accidents involving large passenger jets. Usman said NCAA intended to build on the achievement in 2018 rather than treat it as a one-off result.