THE crash of an Augusta Helicopter belonging to the Nigerian Navy and the frequency of air mishaps have stirred an avalanche of questions over the safety of Nigerian airspace and adequate manpower in the sector as well as other areas.
There is a serious shortage of core aviation personnel with only ageing local manpower such as the pilots, licensed aircraft engineers and licensed avionics engineers. This situation has negative effects on a sector that is safety-driven.
Since the liquidation of the former national carrier, Nigeria Airways, many of the trained and experienced workers have either died or retired, leaving a few that are now threatened out of existence by the influx of their foreign counterparts.
President of Aviation Round Table (ART), Capt. Dele Ore, said there was the need to provide aviation training facilities such as more flying schools and Aviation Training Organisations (ATO) to cope with ageing manpower and dwindling technical skills.
According to him, the foremost aviation training school in Nigeria, the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, should be upgraded in every possible way to enable it regain its pride of place as Africa's number one training centre. He said: "The influx of expatriate pilots and engineers has become so worrisome that expatriate quota has become a big issue in the aviation industry.
"Its effect in airline economics can better be imagined. Apart from the huge costs to our airlines, it inevitably leads to capital flight because of the dearth of Nigerian professionals."
Whatever the deficiencies, they are made most manifest when an airline crashes, killing passengers in an accident that could have been avoided. One issue that agitates the minds of many Nigerians is that over 90 per cent of crashes happen on weekends. Could it be said that air traffic controllers under the management of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) do not take airspace regulatory oversight seriously?
Could it also be that the airlines, air traffic controllers or even the regulatory body relaxes safety procedures?
Could it be human error, to which has been attributed 90 per cent of both commercial and military airplane crashes? Could it just be a coincidence that airplanes drop from the sky most frequently only on weekends - Fridays, Saturday and Sundays?
After years of keeping Nigerians in the dark about accident reports, the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) and the Ministry of Aviation bowed to pressure by releasing 32 accident reports at once. Some date back to the era of Nigeria Airways and many others that are now extinct. Human factor or human error is the common trend that runs through most of the reports, just as there was alleged culpability by the airlines in the area of safety.
Often referred to as "honest mistakes," experts said these unsafe act typically manifest as poorly executed procedures, improper choices or simply the misinterpretation or misuse of relevant information.
Often times, the substandard practices of aircrew will lead to the conditions and unsafe acts described above. For instance, the failure to ensure that all members of the crew are acting in a coordinated manner can lead to confusion (adverse mental state) and poor decisions in the cockpit.
Out of the 32 reports, the Bellview, Sosoliso and Aviation Development Company (ADC) crashes stood out because they happened in quick succession, killing over 300 people in less than one year.
In the reports released penultimate week, AIB stated that ADC crew ignored weather warning and lacked standard operating procedures, adding that other contributory factors were "the crew's delayed decision to carry out a missed approach, and the application of improper procedure while executing the go-around."
The report noted that Sosoliso crew was not equipped with actual wind situation handling. For Bellview, the "training of Pilot-In-Command (PIC) before taking command on the B737 aircraft was inadequate; the cumulative flight hours of the pilot in the days before the accident was indicative of excessive workload that could lead to fatigue."
While the Bellview crash was attributed to the captain's excessive workload and fatigue, the ADC crash, which claimed the lives of the Sultan of Sokoto and 92 others in Tungar Madaki, Abuja, near the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, was attributed to the pilot's decision to take off in known adverse weather conditions and failure to execute the proper windshear recovery procedure, which resulted in operating the aircraft outside the safe flight regime. These caused the aircraft to stall very close to the ground from which recovery was not possible.
Ore told The Guardian that humans, by their very nature, make mistakes, therefore, it should come as no surprise that human error has been implicated in a variety of occupational accidents, including 70 to 80 per cent of those in civil and military aviation.
"In fact, while the number of aviation accidents attributable solely to mechanical failure has decreased markedly over the past 40 years, those attributable at least in part to human error have declined at a much slower rate," he said.
Speaking in the same vein, the Assistant Secretary General of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Mohammed Tukur, said if the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the aviation industry were to achieve their goal of significantly reducing the aviation accident rate over the next 10 years, the primary causes of aviation accidents (human factors) must be addressed.
According to the AON scribe, the solution is to redirect safety efforts so that they address important human factor issues. He stated: "However, this assumes that we know what the important human factor issues are. Therefore, before research efforts can be systematically refocused, a comprehensive analysis of existing database needs to be conducted to determine those specific human factors responsible for aviation accidents and incidents.
"If these efforts are to be sustained, new investigative methods and techniques will need to be developed so that data gathered during human factor accident investigations can be improved and analysis of the underlying causes of human error facilitated."
It began back in 2001 when Executive Airline Service (EAS) aircraft owned by the incumbent Governor of Kogi State, Capt. Idris Wada, crashed on May 4, 2002 in Gwarmaja, near Kano, resulting in the death of 78 passengers. It was on a Saturday. The Bellview and Sosoliso airlines that crashed in Lisa, Ogun State, on October 22, 2005, and in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on December 10, 2005 respectively, killing a combined number of 225 people, also took place on Saturday.
An ADC plane crashed in Abuja on October 29, 2006 (a weekend), killing 106 passengers. An aircraft belonging to Harka Air crashed in Lagos on June 24, 2005, losing all on board. This equally took place on a weekend. A Nigerian military plane crashed in Oko village, Benue State, on September 17, 2006 with the loss of 15 very top Nigerian Army officers. It occurred on a weekend.
An OAS service helicopter crashed in Warri, Delta State, on November 10, 2006 - a weekend - with the loss of four lives. On March 15, 2008, a Wings Aviation airline crashed in Cross River State killing six people. It was a weekend. In 2009 and 2010, there were a series of small, light aircraft crashes, an Airforce jet and helicopter crashes that all resulted in the loss of souls. They mostly took place on weekends.
An OAS helicopter crashed in Ife Odan in Osun State on July 29, 2011 - a weekend - resulting in the loss of three lives. On June 2, 2012, a Nigerian cargo plane shot off the runway into the highway behind Accra's Kotoka International Airport, killing eight Ghanaian nationals that were working on the apron of the airport. Curiously, this, too, occurred on a weekend.
The next day, to the shock of Nigerians in what remains the worst air accident in the country, a Dana MD 83 aircraft with 160 passengers, crashed into a residential area in the outskirts of Lagos, killing all passengers on board, the crew and people on ground. The accident happened on a Sunday.
Apart from commercial aircraft, military aircraft have also had their own share of accidents occurring on weekends. Since September 26, 1992, when a Nigerian Air Force C-130 crashed in a swamp near Ejigbo, killing over 100 young, top military officers, the military has been involved in many crashes that took place at weekends.
Other accidents included the September 12, 1997 NAF Dornier 228-212 crash, January 28, 2005 Nigeria Air Force fighter crash, and the September 17, 2006 crash of 18-seater Dornier 228 Air Force transport plane flying 15 senior army officers and three crew members, with only three survivors who sustained serious injuries. The plane crashed in the northern part of the country at Oko village in Vandeikya local council of Benue State.
On March 14, 2012, a helicopter belonging to the Joint Task Force (JTF) crashed in Jos, Plateau State, killing all occupants on board.
Meanwhile, the occurrence of crashes at weekends has raised concern over whether there is laxity in air traffic control or a mere coincidence. There are indications that controllers are in short supply, coupled with the moribund communication gadgets that make pilot-controller communication very difficult most times.
Air traffic controllers' error showed in the crash of ADC plane in Ejinrin, near Lagos, in 1996. The investigative reports of November 7, 1995, ADC crash into the swamps of Lagos indicated that three times the Air Traffic Controller directed pilots in two planes - one taking off, the other about to land - into each other's paths.
The ill-fated ADC aircraft was equipped with Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), which made its pilot realise the error of the ATC. The other plane was not so equipped. The plane so equipped made a sharp turn away from the other that was not so equipped. The ill-equipped (with Capt. Dafe Sama, one of Nigeria's most experienced pilots in control), upon discovering also that the air traffic controller had misdirected him, made a turn away but into the path just turned to by the other plane.
The pilot then executed a sharp turn away from the new path of the oncoming plane. This was too much for the elderly plane and it plunged into the Ejinrin River.
The ADC crash in 1996 brought to fore the unsafe nature of the airspace said to be dotted with black spots that make controller-to-pilot communication very difficult.
Most times, pilots find it extremely difficult to establish communication, a fact that was attested to by foreign airlines.
Meanwhile, the 64 million euro total radar coverage of Nigeria, according to air traffic controllers, "is not only ineffective but seriously deficient." An air traffic controller, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the much publicised TRACON are terminal radars, adding: "No matter the language they give it, it is a terminal radar.
"That is the deception they give to the whole world, it is terminal radar. It is called terminal radar control (TRACON). They coined it to suite themselves and they called it Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON). It is terminal radar control. Open any air traffic control book, that is what it is.
"The radar in Lagos has a limitation. What they did was this - they had about nine sites and four primary ones in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt. All of them have their limitations. You cannot use radar without communication."
That the country never had efficient radar for search and rescue was not in doubt, as the old radar could not pick the exact crash site of Bellview aircraft in 2005. One of the things that was discovered on the Bellview crash was why the controllers' search and rescue started from Ogbomosho, which, by flying time from Lagos, should have been about 15 to 20 minutes for an aircraft that lost radio contact three minutes after take-off. That exactly showed that something was wrong.
Already, the nation's Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) have called for a national emergency over the country's parlous communication facilities as a foil against further air disasters. The situation is so bad that often times, airplanes enter the Nigerian airspace without the knowledge of air traffic controllers.
At other times, they only get to know of such flights through telephone calls from their counterparts in Nigeria's friendly nations. Apparently to avoid running into trouble with the aviation authorities over an open declaration that the country's airspace was no longer safe for them to overfly, all the major foreign airlines have quietly refrained from using the nation's airspace.
According to them, the airspace is dotted with moribund communications gadgets (visual and voice) such that air traffic controllers and pilots now have extreme difficulty reaching one another. All this means loss of revenue to the country.
Air traffic controllers and the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), in a presentation to the Minister of Aviation recently on the status of TRACON facilities and safety of the Nigerian airspace, said: "It is worrisome that the nation's airspace is increasingly but gradually being avoided by the international over-flyers due to poor communications between air traffic controllers and pilots."
The economic implication is that the Federal Government is losing revenue, which would have accrued to the country if the airlines that now fly from South Africa to London had used the Nigerian airspace.
The document signed by the NUATE President, D.M. Safiyanu, which was received by the minister, stated that the provision of Controller-Pilot-Data-Link Communication (CPDLC) would have been a remedy to this "unfortunate situation," regretting that, "all our neighbouring airspaces have such facilities."
Indeed, Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah-Ogiewonyi, had expressed concern over the state of the country's radar system and security at the airports. A seasoned aircraft pilot, Capt. Benson Ikponwosa, had recently carpeted the inefficiency of air traffic management in the country, adding that lack of the serviceability of radio communications had fully not been resolved.
The captain admitted that there were black spots in the airspace, which make pilot-to-air traffic controller communication very difficult during flight operations. He called on NAMA and the Federal Government to speedily come to the rescue of passengers, crew and equipment by providing basic aviation safety tools. The President of NATCA, Victor Eyaru, explained that the communication problem with the radio has existed for three decades, and the solution has overwhelmed the agency overtime.
He expressed sadness that the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) management expended over N400 million for the total VHF coverage project even as the agency has bought personalised headsets of over N400, 000 each. The statement read: "If all operational Air Traffic Controllers, who are members of NATCA, through their daily loggings are saying the communication equipment available to them should be improved upon to avert impending air disaster (and they) are termed alarmists and saboteurs, then, the system needs a curative measure fast.
"All the claims of NATCA on the issue on the precarious state of VHF radios used by the two Area Control Centres in Kano and Lagos are verifiable facts and NAMA management attested to this by saying that it has challenges in solving the radio problem. It is also a fact that over the years, huge sums of tax-payers money have been expended on the communication projects without noticeable improvement.
"Over N400 million Total VHF coverage project that started about four years ago as solution to the radio problem is now completed, but of no effect."
A former Commander, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, Group Capt. John Ojikutu (rtd), has alleged that one of the things they discovered after the Bellview crash was that if the radar had been on, the aircraft would have been seen by the controllers to still be within the Lagos control zone, adding that they went into details to what was happening.
According to him, "one of the things we discovered was that the radar was on but there was no controller there. Why was there no controller? It was because they did not have enough manpower to man the radar and, according to the evidence that we had, they had controllers to man the system up till Fridays, so by Saturdays and Sundays, because they don't have enough of them, they leave that place empty.
"So, that was why it was not easy for search and rescue to have been able to catch up with the fact that this aircraft should not have gone as far as Ogbomosho, Oyo State. If somebody was watching the radar, you would have known the point where the aircraft crashed and it would have been seen easily."
These deficiencies in air traffic management forced the then Minister of Aviation, Babalola Borisade, to set up a committee on airspace to tackle the rot in that area of aviation safety and other committees to sanitise the sector. Ojikutu, who was a member of the committee, told The Guardian that they noticed about 115 deficiencies and he doubted if those deficiencies had been rectified.
"We are talking of 2006 and 2007, that was the period we sat and that was five years ago. We made so many propositions for them, which they did not do. We don't have the structures; the facilities there are down," he said. "Why don't you start now? Recruit people, send some of them to Egypt, Singapore, South Africa, so that in the next five years (they would be through), because if you send them to NCAT, they are going to be there for two and half years.
"There are gaps between one radar and the other. You have radar without communication to cover the whole place. We need to tell ourselves the truth in this country that people are putting people's lives in danger. They just deceived the President in commissioning a system which terminal radar they called TRACON."
The retired Air Force chief explained that if an aircraft goes to Maiduguri today and wants to take off to enter the airspace controlled by Kano, if they cannot get Kano on air, the moment they get air borne, they will nearly get to Kano before they can establish communication with Kano. He described it as a big danger.
"There is deficiency. Let them tell us there is deficiency. Let them put emphasis on training people. In that radar, they removed so many things. That radar we are talking about, they amended it three times," he cried.
"The first one, they removed the primary radar, the next one was to remove the training aspect of it, which was $4 million to train the controllers. The primary radar component was about $9 million; they removed it. The next one they wanted to remove was VSAT communication and that is why they are having problem today. When they say some of these things, we just watch them."
He explained that the government needed to address urgently the issue of communication, noting that this was a major problem way back in 2005 and 2006 and regretting that up till now, they have not been able to solve it. He disclosed that NAMA signed a communication contract in 2008 or 2009 but lamented that up till today, not much had been done in that regard. He stressed that anything that has to do with safety, they (government) seem not to be concerned.
"When the global aviation regulatory body, the International Civil Organisations (ICAO), visits any country, it does not want to see how beautiful airport terminal buildings are, whether the conveyor belt is working, whether somebody is carrying load on his head or not, ICAO does not give a damn," Ojikutu noted.
"What ICAO bothers about is the safety of passengers inside the aircraft, in the air and the efficiency on the ground for the safety of aircraft. Once the passenger is on ground and not inside the aircraft, it's not ICAO business.
"All this one that the Federal Government is spending billions, they should call people who have money to come forward to invest. No matter the mistake they did on MMA2 with Babalakin's Bi-Courtney, they could correct it. If they are not going to give it to Babalakin, give it to another Babalakin, give it to another Uwaifo, give it to another Tukur, let him build these terminals; give them the safety and security standards and allow the NCAA to regulate it.
"That is what governments do everywhere. Investors, not governments, build all terminal buildings. We don't have communication. What you have is terminal radar and the radio that is there is only for the terminal. Then you ask them, what is the extent or reach of your terminal? Lagos terminal is about 130 nautical miles and has a limitation of height.
"There is always a gap between Lagos and Kano area communication-wise. So, if an aircraft is coming from Kano and Kano area is controlling it, it becomes difficult for that aircraft. If it does not enter the range of Lagos radio properly for you to communicate, it becomes a very big problem.
"The pilots are complaining. I have told them severally to call the operators, the pilots and talk to them. Don't talk to your own people. Every time government wants to talk, it's talking to NAMA or FAAN. Call the real operators. They have done it in the United Nations; they have called the pilots association to talk to them.
"When the issue of hijacking was too much, they called the International Pilots Association. The president went there and addressed the General Assembly on how they should be protected. Government can do the same thing here - call the pilots. But when you are not calling the pilots but your own political appointees, who are they going to protect?"
Nevertheless, NAMA Spokesman, Supo Atobatele, admitted that there were challenges with the system they run but noted that they were being addressed. He told The Guardian that the Federal Government had come to their aide with the release of N400 million for the repair of airspace communication equipment.
"We run a system and there is no system without occasional challenges," he said.
"The challenges in respect of communication are being addressed assiduously by the management with the support of the Federal Government that financed the N400 million Total VHF Radio Coverage of Nigeria.
"This project has been completed and our engineers and the contractors are working round the clock to fine-tune the equipment for optimum operation. In addition, the agency is procuring long range VHF radio as complementary technology for enroute Air Traffic Control."
Atobatele disclosed that the airspace had improved tremendously in the last eight years, noting that features of improvement include the provision of VHF radio coverage, WGS-84 completed with survey of 26 airports to prepare them for performance-based navigation system.
The Guardian