Nigerian authority clears Abdulmunaf Yunusa Sarina’s Azman Air to resume business

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has cleared Azman Air to resume business after grounding it in March following a safety breach involving the undercarriage* on its Boeing 737.

Simple Flying reported that the airline’s first safety breach occurred in February. At the time, eyewitnesses saw one of its air maintenance engineers replacing the right-hand main landing gear wheel assembly (3 and 4) without consulting Boeing’s maintenance manual at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.

The plane was a Boeing 737-500 plane registered as 5N-SYS, christened by Abdulmunaf Yunusa Sarina and en route to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos, with 100 passengers. The plane burst one of its tires on the 18L runway. It could not move afterward, forcing subsequent flights to be delayed and diverted to the international runway (18R). This Day Live reported that no casualties were recorded.

The Kaduna International Airport recorded another incident in February. The air traffic control said an aircraft component fell off. Although they notified the flight’s captain immediately, he chose to continue the flight to Lagos. Even upon arriving at the airport, he did not make any entry into the aircraft technical logbook.

Subsequently, the company’s air maintenance crew found the missing part to be the heat shield** from the number three landing gear. These incidents led to the airline’s suspension.

Sarina founded Azman Air in 2010. The multimillionaire hails from Kano State, as do Aliko Dangote and Abdul Samad Rabiu, Africa’s first and sixth richest men, respectively.

*The undercarriage is a wheeled structure beneath an aircraft, typically retracted when not in use. It receives the impact on landing and supports the plane on the ground.

**An aircraft’s wheel and brake assembly typically include a heat shield disposed between the wheel and brake disks. The heat shield prevents conduction and radiation to the aircraft wheel from heat energy generated in the brake disks.