A’Ibom Airport Hangar Project Gulps N10bn, Ready Early 2014
Akwa Ibom State government has set the inauguration of its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) aircraft hangar project for the first quarter of 2014, which has already gulped N10billion.
In an interaction with aviation correspondents at the Akwa Ibom International Airport at the weekend, the Commissioner for Special Duties, Mr. Austin Mbeh, said the MRO was about 70 per cent completed. He said the state government expects the federal government to partner with it for the facility to serve Nigeria and the African continent.
The facility has the capacity to accommodate two wide bodied aircraft. Mbeh said: “When you talk of funding, the state government having been committed to it (project), has really expended huge amount of money on it. For now, we can say that we have spent over N10 billion.
I can say part of the challenges that we are facing is funding. If the consensus reached between the government and the handling contractors comes to fruition, we are hoping that by the first quarter of next year, this project should be inaugurated and become operational.”
Also, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga (rtd), chairman, Ibom Airport Project, said the government’s vision for the hangar and the cargo terminal informed the plan to build a runway which could handle aircraft such as Airbus A380.
He said the 3.6km runway could be expanded to 4.2km, adding that “with this runway, we are the only airport in the country that can conveniently host an Airbus A380. The taxiway that we are building, the dimension is the same with the runway because we don’t want an aeroplane, landing on the runway with the wings on grass.”
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