Lagos — The United States' Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will not certify Nigeria for Category 1 status this year, which will enable Nigerian airlines fly to any city in the US with Nigeria registered aircraft.

This was deferred to next year due to non completion of the auditing process of Nigeria's aviation industry by FAA; the re-certification of Arik Air ,which will start operation to New York, and December holidays which will spill over to January.

Without the certification, no Nigerian airline can fly to US with aircraft that has Nigerian flag and registration, so Arik Air will fly to New York with aircraft and crew registered in another country which has Category 1 certification.

Director-General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Dr. Harold Demuren, who addressed aviation correspondents yesterday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, assured that Nigeria, which has met about 85 per cent of the conditions required would attain the Category 1 status in the first quarter of 2010.

"Category 1 certification will not happen before the end of this year.

The way we look at it, it is going to be the first quarter of next year. We believe we could have finished all the requirements for this Category 1, which we have virtually closed all the items.

"The last one is the re-certification of Arik, which is going on very well. Right now as I am speaking to you we have a team of about 10 people in Washington D.C. doing evaluation on Arik. I will be joining them again tonight (yesterday) after this meeting," he said.