The Dana Air Flight 992 crash on June 3, 2012, which killed all 153 passengersand some people on ground, could have been prevented by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), according to a recent report by the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB).
The accident report, which made public by the AIB
About a fortnight ago stated that the NCAA should take full responsibility for the crash because it allowed the airline to breach safety regulation, which exposed its own laxity in enforcing regulations on the airlines.
According to the AIB report, the probable causal factors of the Flight 992 crash included the fact that engine number one lost power 17 minutes into the flight, and thereafter on final approach, engine number two lost power and failed to respond to throttle movement on demand for increased power to sustain the aircraft in its flight configuration.
The report observed that: “The inappropriate omission of the use of the Checklist, and the crew’s inability to appreciate the severity of the power-related problem, and their subsequent failure to land at the nearest suitable airfield,” contributed to the crash. Then, “Lack of situation awareness, inappropriate decision making, and poor airmanship,” which is the human error that contributed to the crash.
Reacting to this report, aviation security consultant and the Secretary General of Aviation Round Table (ART), Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd), observed: “I said that much then; not on the basis of what I’m reading now in the report, but the fact that the airline was operating a single type of aircraft not a mixed fleet then. The loss of two engines on an aircraft on just one hour flight was worrisome to me and I believed then that it demanded a critical investigation not only by AIB but by the manufacturers. Such incidence required the grounding of the aircraft invariably too, the airline operations.”
What may have contributed to the crash, according to AIB report, was the failure of the cockpit crew to take the right action under emergency and its lack of experience about Nigeria’s operational environment. But Ojikutu brought to the fore the seemingly shady past of the pilot, Captain Peter Waxtan.
“They said he had a misdemeanor that was not reported or logged and was suspended by the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) in 2009; employed by Dana in 2012 but he renewed his license, though the stamped license by NCAA was not signed by any official.
“His checkout captain wrote about five adverse report on him during his line training with Dana Air, which he concluded on 1st May, yet by 2nd May he started flying as a captain on the aircraft; a month later, the pilot who was not duly certified by NCAA flew an aircraft that had a flameout engine 17 minutes after takeoff and crashed the aircraft after the second engine flameout 37 minutes after killing 153 persons on board and six others on the ground,” Ojikutu noted.
What is ironic is that the administration in NCAA under which this tragic accident happened has been eulogised by stakeholders and others as the best thing that had happened to the industry, yet this malfeasance was allowed to take place. And not only this, it was under the same administration that the Beachraft 1900D owned by Kings Air crashed in March 2008 when it hit the hills while attempting to land at Obudu airstrip in Cross River state. And if the principle that accident does not just happen; that if follows series of neglect, cutting corners and poor regulation, that same administration should take the blame for the crash of Associated Aviation Flight 361, which crashed into fuel dump premises on August 3, 2013, while taking off from the domestic terminal of the MurtalaMuhammed International Airport, Lagos.
What AIB report may not have brought to the fore was the intensity of laxity at NCAA during the Dana Air crash.
A senior inspector in NCAA, who was involved in the audit of Dana Air after the crash disclosed to THISDAY that both the management of the airline and NCAA were culpable in the accident.
Speaking on the allegation that the pilot of the flight was hastily given a license by NCAA, he defended the agency by noting that “NCAA does licence verification before validating or converting any foreign licence. If that was the case, the media would have castigated the authority.
“All I hear was that the pilot’s capacity was limited but the DFO (Director of Flight Operations) still gave him a job because he brought him as a friend, and they also needed a crew.”
He added: “I tend to believe this because the last incident that resulted in their grounding before I got involved was due to a gross negligence from the DFO. And he did not report the matter appropriately; until we found out, myself and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at that time, YvanDrewinsky. That was why we saw him off. That was one of the preconditions before we let them (Dana) restart their operation.
“Actually the root cause was that the management personnel employed by Dana at that time were not able to implement safety operation; the crash was as a result of that. The engine issue and other aspects were as a result of that. It took us in NCAA and myself in particular, to identify these problems, which should have been the responsibility of the management and not the authority (NCAA).
“Management was not able to identify problems like bad engine maintenance that led to the failure of the engine. And the same problem continued after the crash until the former Minister of Aviation, now Senator Stella Oduah grounded them for a near crash that happened in Port Harcourt,” the official said.
On why the airline allowed these shortcomings to happen, the official said, “I believe the Managing Director was micromanaging the operation (the airline denied this), which prevented the airline technical personnel from doing their job. That was why Mr. Drewinsky (the Accountable Manager) left.”
What is again ironical however is that some of those stakeholders who eulogised the administration in NCAA under which these accidents happened are today calling for the removal of the present Director General of the agency. One of them recently in a press conference said Nigeria had been rated very low in safety and that was why the current Director General should be removed. But currently Nigeria’s rating on safety is 95 percent and overall rating of 65 percent which his higher than global standard of 62 percent.
It has to be noted also that Dana Air has improved its safety standard since after the accident. It has passed audit by the Flight Safety Group of NCAA and its foreign partners, and it has also passed the International Air Transport Association Operational Audit (IOSA). The airline said that since after the accident it has changed the technical personnel and employed a very competent Accountable Manager who is a Nigerian with 30 years experience and also appointed the DFO who also has more than 30 years experience, who is also a Nigerian.
“Every flight is monitored and tracked because we have learnt our lessons from what happened and it will never, never happen again,” an official of the airline assured THISDAY.
THISDAY
