By Chinelo Obogo

The prospect of an early resumption of operations for Azman Air may be bleak as the findings in the final safety audit carried out by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) indicts the airline of N1.5 billion debt and top airline officials of lacking understanding of their responsibilities.

On March 16, the NCAA suspended the operations of all the Boeing 737 aircraft in the fleet of Azman Air Services Limited over safety concerns after a series of incidents and immediately commenced an audit which covered flight operations, management, maintenance and economic using criteria from Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations (NCARs) Part 9, NCARS Part 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 20 and Nigeria Civil Aviation Act 2006 NCARS, Part 18.

The agency published its findings which was signed by the Director General, Captain Nuhu Musa, on April 2, 2021. The final audit report revealed that in the case of management personnel required for Commercial Air Transport Operations, Azman Air was found not to be in compliance with the provisions of Nig.CARs 9.2.2.2 (a) and (e) (2) with regards to provision of resources and discharge of the duties of the accountable manager.

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The finding is evidenced by complete non-staffing of the Safety Management Department and staffing of the Quality Management Department with only one officer, thereby making it impossible to effectively implement Safety and Quality Management Systems functions as required by Nig.CARs 9.2.2.3 and 9.2.2.10, respectively.

The report also stated that Azman Air Ltd was found to be in violation of Nig.CARs 18.10.3 regarding the submission of monthly financial health reports to the NCAA. “This is evidenced in Azman Air’s failure to meet up with the monthly obligation in submitting the required financial health report for months despite several reminders. Last submission was in July, 2020. During this audit, Azman submitted reports for December, 2020 and January 2021.”

Azman Air was also found to be in violation of Section 12 (1) of Civil Aviation Act, 2006 as regards to non-remittance of five per cent Ticket Sales Charge.  This  is  evidenced  by  Azman’s indebted of N1,545,262,120.31 to the authority.