Nigeria, through the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), has resumed the downloading and analysis of black boxes of aircrafts involved in accidents in the country. This is seen as a positive development as the agency would save foreign exchange that would have been spent had the equipments been taken to the U.S. or UK for forensic analysis.
The $5.8 million Flight Safety Laboratory equipment at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, which was resuscitated last year, was put into use for the analysis of Dana MD 83 airplane that skidded off the runway while landing at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, Rivers State, on February 21, 2018. The laboratories were equally used to decode and analyse the Gulfstream accident in Abuja and that of Delta that happened recently.
The laboratory was designed to download information from Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) among others, which are necessary requirements for a thorough and accurate accident investigation.
The facility was used to download the flight recorders of Associated Airlines’ aircraft crash of October 2013 with the assistance of the manufacturers of the laboratory despite the fact that the agency had not effected full payment.
However, since the single usage in 2013, the facility had not been put to proper use due to lack of personnel to manage the laboratory. There were also challenges from the manufacturer’s end. The summary of the matter is that the laboratory was not working when the Commissioner, AIB, Akin Olateru, took over leadership of the agency, January last year. Speaking to New Telegraph at the weekend, Olateru, an aircraft engineer, said lack of funds almost hampered activities at the agency when he was appointed last year to head the agency.
He disclosed that AIB does not charge for anything it does unlike the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT)that charge for their services. Olateru further disclosed that under United Nations charter, AIB is not allowed to charge for its services, forcing the agency to be creative in funding its projects.
Worried by the situation of the agency, Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, caused FAAN to cede five per cent of its revenue to AIB from its Passengers Service Charge (PSC). “In terms of funding, this is where I really thank the minister of state for aviation, the National Assembly for their extreme support to make sure AIB delivers on its core mandate and that, we have achieved with their support,” he added. Speaking on common factor of human error or human factor that usually lead to air fatality, the AIB chief said majority of crashes usually happened as a result of human errors. “Human beings all over the world are the most complex machine on earth. Anything that has got to do with human is bound to fail someday. This is why there is nowhere in the world that is not accident prone.
There is no airline today that you can say that does not have serious incident. There is no perfect system anywhere, but all we can do as a nation, responsible people and responsible agency is to ensure we step up the game in human factor.
“Human factor has been identified as the cause of accidents all over the world to and it is recommended that operators, service providers invest in that training to avoid or minimise human factor,” he said. Asked if the age of aircraft operating in the country’s airspace is responsible for the frequent incidents recorded in recent times, Olateru noted that age of aircraft had got nothing to do with airworthiness of the airplane.
