The Accidents Investigation Bureau, AIB, has thrown more lights on why the agency is yet to conclude investigations into the June 3, 2012, Dana Air crash at the Ishaga area of Lagos, 14 months after the ill-fated accident occurred.
The crash claimed 163 lives onboard and on ground while several properties worth millions of naira were also destroyed on ground. In one of the houses destroyed, the occupants including a couple died, rendering their three young children orphans.
AIB Commissioner, Capt. Muhtar Usman, in an exclusive interview with National Mirror over the weekend, said that the commission was still carrying out tests and analyses on the wreckage of the aircraft parts abroad.
He also disclosed that the agency had not closed investigation on the crash, assuring that it would soon come out with the probable cause of the accident very soon.
Usman in the interview with our correspondent, identified the lack of aircraft manufacturer in the country or the continent as one of the major stumbling blocks against the quick completion of investigations on the probable cause of air crashes, saying that an effective flight laboratory equipment in the country would reduce the amount of time spent on conducting investigation in case of a crash.
He said: "Our target is to finish as soon as possible. I talked of funding earlier, but there are other things that are dependent, may be not directly on funding; we don't have all the facilities available to us and no country in the world has, except may be a very few.
For instance, we don't have aircraft manufacturers here; there are things that sometimes you have to go back to the manufacturers to do.
"Also, we are still expecting a lot of tests and analyses, which is dependent on either laboratories or other agencies we don't have control over. That was why I said the first step is to have the laboratory.
"The laboratory only does the recordings, if it comes to engine analysis and so on, we don't have the facilities, but no country can say it has everything. In a country like the United States, where we have manufacturers, if issues like that come up, they use the manufactures and they get whatever they want done.
"That is why I cannot tell you the particular time the final report would come out. Of course, as part of the protocol, we will have to get what we call draft final report.
"When you get that draft final report, you will send the draft final report to all the participants and you have to give them minimum of 60 days to look at the report, make their comments, in which if it makes sense to you, you will accept and incorporate it."
National Mirror
The whole crash of a thing is something very bad that still lingers in people's memory so I think we should just try to forget about it once and for all!