ANALYZING THUNDERSTORM RISK VALUE ON AIR TRAVEL OVER THE NIGER DELTA REGION: IMPLICATION FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AT AEROSPACE TERMINALS

Adverse weather events like thunderstorm significantly affects the aviation industry and associated operations resulting in huge economic, human and other unquantifiable losses. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the level of preparedness at airports to avert the effects of thunderstorm on flight operations in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study and the primary data included relevant information on effects of thunderstorm on aviation processes obtained from administered questionnaire whereas secondary data included flights cancelled, diverted, delayed and crashed sourced from the archive of the Nigerian Aerospace Management Agency (NAMA). Analyses were done using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple linear regressions (MLR). The Perception of respondents indicated that the manifestation of thunderstorms at the airports accounted for flight cancellation (75%), flight diversion (75%) and flight delays (100%) with a total of 14880 flight delayed, 1657 diverted and 13558 flights cancelled within the period under investigation. The ANOVA results showed that the mean thunderstorm for the region was 116 day/year but varied spatially at P<0.05 (Fcal-16.586; sig-0.000). The MLR revealed, r, 0.6 implying that 36 % of the aviation operations is determined by thunderstorm occurrence. Although, the model was significant at P<0.05 (F-4.2; SigF-0.015), indicating that flights operations significantly depend on thunderstorm in the area, 75% of the respondents strongly affirms that preparedness level to handle thunderstorm effects at the airports is low. Therefore, provision of adequate fire men and vehicles, acquisition of weather vagaries compliant aeroplanes, upgrade of existing and acquisition of modern equipment for weather measurement and forecasting at the airports were strongly recommended.