Members of the National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE) have emphasised the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the sector, saying the presence of the technology will be of great benefit to the Communications, Navigation and Surveillance systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) when positively Intergrated.
The president of NAAE , Comrade Selzing Miri, who stated this while speaking on the association’s forthcoming Annual General Meeting /Conference in Abuja on November 22, with its theme,: ‘The Integrations of AI in CNS/ATM Systems and the Economic implications for the aviation Industry: the Roles of ATSEPs”, said NAAE will continue to build on emerging technologies to ensure that ATSEPs remained abreast with their roles when fully equipped.
While saying the conference will bring out the future benefits of AI to the engineers as the technology will act as partner to the engineers by complementing them, Miri added that there was no need to entertain fears over the integration of AI saying it was part of the engineers.
The NAAE boss disclosed that only those redundant will entertain fear over the introduction as they will be replaced while it will ease the proficiency of the active ones.
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He urged the government to create more awareness of the activities of AI through workshops and conferences to acquaint engineers of their roles while ATSEPs should be given necessary support in terms of exposure and finding.
Miri, while commending the management of NAMA for improved welfare, noted that his tenure, in the last two years, has witnessed stability, trainings and better welfare for NAAE members. He said that it would have been better but for the 50 percent revenue deduction by the federal government and called on government to stop further deductions of the fund to enable agencies to meet their obligations of providing safety and security in the industry.
The NAAE president, while acknowledging the fact that the current NAMA navigational charges were inadequate to provide all the needed logistics like vehicles, running of its facilities and acquiring new ones, called on the minister of aviation and aerospace, Festus Keyamo to reconsider an increase in the NAMA navigational charges.
