Delta Air Lines to buy 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Sky Watch Nigeria.

Delta Air Lines Incorporated is nearing a deal to buy a 49 per cent stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited from Singapore Airlines Limited and may pay less than $500m for it, three people familiar with the matter said.

The price range is $300m to $500m and an agreement may be announced this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Singapore Airlines paid £600m for the Virgin Atlantic stake in 1999, or about $966m now.

Bloomberg News reported that Delta and Virgin Atlantic may seek a joint venture on trans-Atlantic routes as part of the arrangement, two of the people said.

Virgin Atlantic’s base at London Heathrow airport is a gateway for flights across the North Atlantic, the world’s most lucrative market for premium passengers.

“Heathrow access, that’s what Delta finds attractive here,” said Savanthi Syth, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates Incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida, who rates Atlanta- based Delta outperform.

“This is not necessarily a carrier that they expect to make a big return on investment on. There’s a reason Singapore is getting out.”

Virgin Atlantic, founded and majority-owned by United Kingdom billionaire Richard Branson, posted a pretax loss of $129m for the year ended in February, and has delayed adding planes.

Representatives of Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines and Delta declined to comment about the sale process.

Delta, Air France-KLM and their SkyTeam partners are the smallest alliance group at Heathrow, with about 5 percent of takeoff and landing slots. Oneworld, led by British Airways and AMR Corp.’s American Airlines, dominates with almost half of all service, followed by United Continental Holdings Inc. and its Star Alliance partners with about a quarter of slots.

Lagos ACC as effective radio coverage sector - NAMA

Sky Watch Nigeria.

Nigerian Airspace Management Agency(NAMA) has taken another bold step in improving air traffic services within the nation's airspace as the Lagos Area Control Center is being sectorized  to de-congest  the existing radio frequency.

According to the management, the current radio frequency -127.3 MHz  for the Lagos Area Control Center, is now congested following  heavy traffic within the Southern airspace, adding that the best solution now is to create additional frequency to allow for effective radio communication between pilots and air traffic on controllers.

Consequently, the management has therefore raised another frequency on 120.9MHz to decongest the current one and as part of the Operational Readiness Review  (ORR) which includes new procedures being drawn, gap analysis, and safety audit while the engineers and air traffic  controllers are presently  testing the new frequency .

According to the management, the new radio frequency will be deployed for operation by Monday 17,December,2012 when the integrity of the system is ascertained .

Globally, from time to time air traffic system management are redefined  to accommodate new additional equipment  and that is what the agency has been doing of recent  to allow for service delivery.

Attesting to the latest development, the General Manager, Public Affairs of NAMA, Mr Supo Atobatele affirmed that, :''Once again ,the agency would like to confirm the integrity of all our navigation equipment across the nation's airports and this management would not succumb to blackmails by any group within the system''.

He added that,:''NAMA,with the strong support of the Federal government through its various capital projects,remains a leading Air Navigation Service Provider in the Continent and the management under the leadership of Engineer Mazi Nnamdi Udoh has vowed to remain focused in taking the agency to a global reckoning''