NCAA Suspends Max Air’s Domestic Flights for Three Months

The NCAA Chief, Capt. Chris Ona Najomo, has explained the suspension of Max Air’s domestic flight operations for three months, as announced by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

In an interview monitored by RadioNow 95.3 fm news desk, Capt. Najomo revealed that the NCAA conducted surveillance enhancements and audits on Max Air, covering organization, infrastructure, safety management, compliance, and practices. Unfortunately, the results were not satisfactory.

“We’ve done risk assessment and this risk assessment all includes both organization, infrastructure, safety management, compliance, and practices. And because of this, when we carried it out, the one we came out of Max Air wasn’t good enough. So when this thing happened, in fact we just, in fact we just finished that of Max Air last week.So when this thing happened, we now called for a meeting because it’s just one too many. Max Air had a problem in Yola, had a problem in an incident in Maiduguri, and now in Kano. So we called for a meeting and we called the management of Max Air for a meeting.And we told them, well, we need you to tell us these things have happened one too many. And they have of course told us that yes, this is what happened.”

According to Capt. Najomo, the NCAA called Max Air for a meeting after which the airline decided to ground its local operations. The NCAA gave Max Air three months to rectify the issues, after which another assessment will be conducted to ensure they can resume domestic flights.

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“Max has just told us that, oh, we have decided to ground our patients so that our local operations so that we can look inwardsly because we gave them the indices of the of the of the risk assessment which we brought out and it was not looking good. So I told you can give you three months. They said one month.I said no, give you three months to be able to look at yourselves and make sure that you come out with them all the indices that we have given you that is in the yellow and we’ll come back in three months time and give you another assessment and this time around it will be a thorough assessment to make sure that you’re ready to fly back safely before we release you back on your local route. That is what we have done.”

When asked why Max Air’s international flights are still operational, Capt. Najomo clarified that the NCAA found no issues with the airline’s international operations. The suspension only affects their local operations, which will not impact their international flights.

“Yes, you know, there are two different types of, there are two fleets, the B737 fleet is what he uses for his domestic operation and he uses the Boeing 747 and the 777, that is what he uses for his international operations and what he does for international operations are the hatch operations operations. We have no findings in his international operations, so it is his local operation that we’ve found findings on and we’ve told them it will not affect his international operations.”