Aviation agencies work to improve safety bar

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) says it has intensified surveillance on all airlines operating in the country. This follows the several incidences that have besieged the aviation industry in Nigeria this year.

The Director General of the NCAA, Captain Muktar Usman, speaking to journalists in Lagos last week said the regulatory agency was learning from the recent major and minor incidences that occurred in the country’s aviation industry within the year, stressing that lessons learnt from the incidents would be put to use to prevent major calamities from happening in the industry.

Usman pointed out that 2018 had been turbulent in the global aviation industry generally with incidences and accidents, but assured that the regulatory agency in Nigeria would sustain and improve on the safety level in the past years while the safety recommendations of Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) would be followed to the letter in order to improve safety in the system.

“Let me say that the year 2018 started with so many incidences and even accidents worldwide. Unfortunately, even though we have some incidences here, none has resorted into any fatality or any serious injury. Of course, when you have occurrences, incidences, they are to give you an early warning probably of something more to come if you don’t do anything.

 Of course, we are all humans with our own inadequacies and that is why accidents or incidences happen, “but our job here in NCAA is to prevent those accidents or incidences from happening and that we do through the safety oversight systems as defined by ICAO. So, we take note of those incidences that have happened, we are going to learn from those incidences to ensure that we don’t have any unforeseen accident. So, we are intensifying our surveillance especially the ramping aspect of it; checking, rechecking, training, re-training, inspections as much as possible to ensure that whatever happens is in the past.

In a related development the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), constituted a committee on the effectiveness of the safety recommendations made by the bureau from inception.

This becomes necessary in order to consolidate the efforts being made by the management since assumption of office to extend the frontiers of aviation safety, not only in Nigeria but globally.

Commissioner of AIB, Engineer Akin Olateru said, “We inherited 27 outstanding accident reports out of which we have published 10 as at the end of 2017. These reports generated 35 safety recommendations. We hope to release another set of six accident reports before the end of May, 2018.

For accident investigation to be relevant and effective, it must be thorough, impartial and timely. Timeliness is of essence. You would recall that we recently released three preliminary reports of two serious incidents and an accident shortly after they occurred, Olateru explained.

He said it was noteworthy that the Bureau’s accident investigation and safety recommendations have recorded positive impacts in the national and global aviation arena.

Our investigations into the Bristow Helicopter crash, which occurred in Lagos on August 12, 2015 led to the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Sikorsky, the aircraft manufacturer taking global safety actions.

 Diamond Aircraft Manufacturer also took safety action following our investigations into the serious incident involving Diamond DA 42 with registration number 5N-BKS, which occurred in Benin in July 2012.

AIB during investigations identifies a lot of hazards that sometimes may not be related to the particular occurrence under investigation but work with the operators to resolve them.   It is noteworthy to state that safety recommendations/ safety alerts can be made at any stage of the accident investigation and we do not have to wait until final report is released.

 “Let me say that the year 2018 started with so many incidences and even accidents worldwide. Unfortunately, even though we have some incidences here, none has resorted into any fatality or any serious injury. Of course, when you have occurrences, incidences, they are to give you an early warning probably of something more to come if you don’t do anything.

it is worth commending these agencies for taking their jobs seriously as they have come up with programmes that will further improve the safety bar in the nation’s aviation industry. This is because accidents do have negative impact on air passengers and also the industry.