Last week, for the first time ever, I went to an airport without feeling tense and anxious. The reason was simple, actually; I was going to the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport in Abuja not to enter a plane, but to see some of the many pieces of equipment strung all around it in order to make flight arrivals and departures safe. In so far as these equipment were firmly on the ground, I was eager to see them.

The road to last Thursday's early morning trip to the airport began with a chance meeting, and my former boss Dr. Omar Ibrahim, who lives in Vienna, introduced me to the Austrian Mr. Georg Eder, managing director of Avsatel. Interesting man, Georg Eder; he first came to Nigeria in 1977 as General Manager of Bauchi's Steyr tractor assembly plant, and he told me he has been a pilot for 40 years. [Ugh! Even though I once applied as a youth to go study commercial piloting in Russia, I regard flying as a crazy idea these days].

Eder also told me that the ADC plane crash of October 2006 that killed the Sultan of Sokoto and at least 30 other persons personally known to me, including my brother Ahmed, was caused by a mysterious weather phenomenon called wind shear. So also the 2005 Sosoliso plane crash in Port Harcourt, which killed lots of schoolchildren. The Bellview plane crash of November 2005 however had a different cause.

In response, the Obasanjo regime resumed the stalled Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON) project, now known as "Safe Tower Project." This project, for which a N19 billion Aviation Intervention Fund was committed, is now mired in a major national controversy, for which two former ministers of aviation and Georg Eder are standing trial. For obvious reasons, that is not the subject of my writing today.

Under this project, Avsatel got contracts worth billions to replace obsolete communications and meteorological equipment at the Abuja, Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt airports. At least the dispute and court case are not about execution of the contract, because Avsatel has procured, installed, calibrated, synchronized and integrated state-of-the-art aviation safety equipment at three of these airports.

Even though the warranty period has lapsed, Avsatel's engineers are still responsible for maintaining this equipment, some of which is on the control tower, but most of which is buried in the dense bush around the Abuja airport. I asked if I could see some of it and, last Thursday, off we went in a 4-wheel drive vehicle with one engineer from New Zealander in a cowboy hat. He had the usual Whiteman's total devotion to his duties; in his pocket was a huge bunch of keys, which he brought out and opened each piece of equipment we came upon as we went round the airport.

Low Level Windshear, the chief culprit that aroused my curiosity, is a hurricane that is rolling on the ground with a wind speed of up to 250km/hr. Unlike the normal hurricane, windshear is totally invisible to the eyes or to radar, so when a departing or arriving plane flies into it, it drags the plane and rolls it over into the ground. Very scary thought. Windshear does not occur in Europe, Eder said, which clearly delayed the search for a technological solution.

To get to our first destination, the Low Level Windshear Alert System [LLWAS] which identifies windshear near the ground, we had to dart across the northern end of the Abuja airport runway. Before darting across, we had to look out if there were any planes coming in to land. Within minutes of our getting across, a huge Arik Air plane appeared on top of the field, and I thought it was a close shave!

Our vehicle tossing up and down, we drove deep into the bush, across yam fields, swept over bushes and dodged big trees to get to some of the sites. There are 8 of the LLWAS masts strung strategically around the airport, 4 on each side of the runway, and we visited four of them. Selecting the sites to install them took two weeks of intense engineering calculations, the engineer said. Each LLWAS is a long solar-powered mast, collecting windshear information and beaming it by radio signal to the control center in the airport tower. This info is then processed by computers and relayed to the air traffic controllers, who in turn relay it to the pilots.

I was then taken to see the two Ceilometers on each end of the runway, which measure cloud layers up to 25,000 feet by shooting laser beams to the sky. As I made to peep in, the engineer dragged me away and said I could get the jitters for hours if laser beams hit my eyes. My second close shave that day!

Next, we went to see the Runway Visibility Range (RVR) finders, which measure visibility at both ends and in the middle of the runway. These are two small masts about 10 metres apart that send a "pure white beam" to each other, which then calculates ground visibility and relays it to the control tower.

These little masts were stationed only meters away from the runway, and my tour guide said a danger exists that if a plane slips off the runway, it could hit one of them and they could rip the plane's wings apart [incidentally, a plane's wing is its fuel tank!]. That was exactly what caused the Madrid plane crash of last September. In order to avert such an event, Avsatel procured these equipment made of carbon fibre, so that if a plane hits them, they collapse from the base and do not tear the plane apart. Very thoughtful of the Whiteman, I thought.

We then went to see two ultrasonic wind sensors at each end of the runway. These ones measure solar radiation, air pressure and rainfall. Deeper into the bush, we came upon the Thunder and Lightning equipment. This one detects thunder and lightning activity in the sky up to 10 kilometers away; no comforting thought to remember that lightning was mentioned as a possible culprit in the recent Air France plane crash off the Brazilian coast.

All these equipment are connected via radio links to the equipment room in the tower building, where the signals are processed and sent to the air traffic controllers and meteorologists via cable, and automatically via radio to the pilots via a system called Automatic Terminal Information System [ATIS].

We then went to the equipment room at the top of the control tower, which has a horde of computers and other equipment as well as extra large UPSs and a bank of more than 100 large batteries. It also has an emergency communication system and a completely replaced infrastructure consisting of antistatic floors, to guard against fire. Next, I entered the control tower, which has a wonderful view of the airport. You can see all planes arriving and departing and hear the traffic controllers speaking to the pilots. All radio conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers are automatically recorded and saved in special computers.

I left the airport that day thinking that, well, we thank God for all these equipment. That does not mean I am in a hurry to enter the next plane.