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The following is an unauthorized version of the Report of the Panel of Experts to the United Nations on Sierra Leone.
This is not the official report. The official report has not yet been released. The report posted here is subject to change by the sanctions committee.
PART THREE
A TECHNICAL NOTE ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS IN WEST AFRICA
I. BACKGROUND
274. What follows is a technical paper on air traffic control systems in West Africa. Recommendations emanating from this part of the report have been included in the previous section.
275. First, a word on terminology: airspace is divided into lower and upper airspace and into Flight Information Regions (FIRs), which can, as required, encompass Terminal Control Areas (TMAs) or Upper Control Areas (UTAs).
276. An FIR is an airspace with specific dimensions, in which an information service and an alert service are provided. A TMA is a control area established, in principle, at airways crossroads, around one or several important aerodromes. West African airspace is managed either by agencies to which governments have delegated responsibility, or by state-managed administrations. These include the following:
- ASECNA (Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation in Africa and Madagascar) is in charge of the airspaces of Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal;
- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have established the Roberts FIR to control their airspace;
- Ghana manages its airspace and that of Benin, Sao Tomé and Togo from the Accra FIR;
- Cape Verde has an extensive oceanic airspace called Sal FIR;
- Nigeria has divided its national airspace in two parts: the Kano FIR to the North and the Lagos FIR to the South.
277. The Panel agreed, for the purposes of this report, to review first the air traffic control systems in West Africa, and then the ones that prevail in the Roberts FIR and the countries under its jurisdiction. For reasons of timing and flight availability, the Panel's expert on the subject was unable to visit the centres in Abidjan, Lagos and Sal Island.