Civil Aviation wants Soroti flying school revamped

By Vivian Agaba           

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) wants Government to revive Soroti Flying school to train more airworthiness and flight operations inspectors to promote safe air transport in the country.
 
According to Sam Muneeza, the director safety, security and economic regulation at CAA, out of 14 airworthiness inspectors needed, only eight are available to serve at various aerodromes in the country.
 
Muneeza says the inspectors are involved in registration of aircraft; aircraft type certification, approval of changes to the type certificate (modifications and repairs), and issue and renew certificates of airworthiness, approval of design and production organisations, approval of aircraft maintenance organisations, certification of operators and licensing of personnel.  
 
He also explained that authority has only four flight operations inspectors out of the eight who are required.
Out of the needed eight air navigations service inspectors, according to Muneeza, CAA has four.
 
Additionally, out of the required seven aerodromes and ground aids, the authority has five. 
 
He said four categories of critical workers in the aviation industry were trained at Soroti Flying School before it became inactive.
 
"Government should revamp and rehabilitate Soroti flying school, give it all the necessary infrastructure and appropriate funding so that it comes back to normality to be able to attract students into these various disciplines ,” he said
 
Muneeza added: "Lack of enough inspectors has led to accumulated work and therefore service delivery and provision is usually delayed."
 
He said if Soroti were active and training different personnel to work in air transport, the authority would have enough personnel thus making service delivery easier and fast.

Muneeza explained that sometimes, the authority poaches for inspectors from airlines or directly from Air Navigation Services Directorate.
 
He was speaking during a side interview with New Vision at the key stakeholders' sensitization workshop in the aviation industry on Aerodromes Regulations held at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on Thursday.
 
He said the few available inspectors in Uganda are hard to attract and expensive to maintain because they want to be paid highly and authority cannot afford.
 
"We have a challenge of attracting personnel to come and work as inspectors here. This is because there are few airline inspectors in Uganda and those available are very expensive CAA cannot afford paying them,” he said.
 
Muneeza explained that when there is a crisis, the authority is forced to hire retired inspectors to come in and help.
 
Director, Airports and Aviation Security, CAA, Eng. John Tusubira Kagoro said that the workshop was organized to enhance the stakeholders' knowledge levels and keep them abreast with current standards and recommended practices about Aerodromes.

"Regulations on Aerodromes keep changing due to new discoveries and technologies, therefore sensitising stakeholders on safety and measures is paramount," said Kagoro.
 
An aerodrome or airdrome is a location from which aircraft operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers or neither.

Aerodromes include small general aviation airfields, large commercial airports and military airbases.