About Roberts FIR |
The Roberts Flight Information Region was established on the 17th of January, 1975 when the three states of the Mano River basin – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, set up a cooperative venture to provide air navigation services for en-route flights (above 3,000 feet) in their combined airspace. Member states continued to manage the lower airspace within their territorial boundary.
As a sign of the progress that has been achieved through years of cooperation, the responsibility for providing Approach Control service, which remains with individual states, has been revised to FL100. With initial funding from member governments, we have taken enormous strides to become a fully autonomous entity, which now contributes heavily to the development of civil aviation in the sub-region. The civil wars that erupted in the late 1980s and early 1990s affected two member states. It put considerable pressure on our ability to continue providing service. However, our resilience enables us to maintain an unbroken service while relocating personnel to Sierra Leone, and then Guinea, before returning to Liberia in 2008. The Ebola outbreak of 2014/15 again brought the exemplary professionalism and capacity of the Roberts F.I.R. Our Air Traffic Management and Engineering staff worked round the clock to ensure a smooth emergency evacuation of personnel without a drop in service quality. |