,,,Bureau set to release another set of air accident reports
To ensure record time investigations of air crashes in Nigeria and West African sub region, Federal Government has approved the upgrade of the obsolete material science and flight safety laboratories of the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) reports
According to a report monitored on Woleshadare.net today, the approval for the upgrade was disclosed by the Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) Akin Olateru over the weekend during a training course organised by the agency on accident investigation report writing held in Lagos.
Though Olateru refused to declare the financial implication of the upgrades, it is however speculated that a huge amount of money would be involved considering its hi-tech nature.
He however disclosed that the agency has two laboratories; the flight safety laboratory and the material science laboratory.
The flight safety laboratory is where the Flight Data Recording (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) otherwise known as the black boxes of aircraft are downloaded.
Stating that the contract for the laboratories started in 2008 and executed in 2012, Olateru stressed that the software is now obsolete and needed to be upgraded.
“This contract was executed in 2012. They started it in 2008 and finally executed due to whatever reason in 2012. By that time, as at today, look at it very well, the software is obsolete. If you buy your computer in 2008 and compare it with what we have in 2018, you need to upgrade the software. There must be some upgrade. It is just to upgrade what we have and to incorporate very important component which is the training side of it.
“This is part of this contract, to continuously train people on how to use the equipment and the analysis of the data is the one that is most critical and you can’t train an expert in one week. It is an ongoing thing and that is the whole essence of the upgrade. Thank God for the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the upgrade was approved on Wednesday for us to do proper accident investigation”.
This is coming as the AIB has concluded plans to release another six accident reports in the next 30 days, that is, before the end of February 2018.
The release of expected before next month would bring to 16, the total number of reports released by AIB since Olateru assumed office on January 13, 2017. This, however, excludes one safety bulletin.
Stating that in line with global recommendation, accident investigation should be concluded within a year, the Commissioner said that after assuming office, he did a review and discovered that there were 27 pending accident reports that had gathered dust on the shelf with some dating back to 2005 and wondered what went wrong with inability to release the reports for stakeholders to apply the safety recommendations by the investigators.
“When we came in, I did a review. We had 27 pending accident reports. Some dates back to 2005 and we were in 2017. I was wondering what really went wrong. Just like the Commissioner, Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency (BAGAIA) Caj Frostell said, accident investigation should be concluded within a year. We set everything in motion. Funding was another problem. In carrying out accident investigation, you need a lot of resources; manpower and finance. We pushed everything in motion and through the support of the Minister of State for Aviation, he gave us maximum support and we did what we were supposed to do. To the glory of God, we released 11 reports by December 2017. One year, ten final reports and one safety bulletin are some of the things we did last year, ” he said.
“You can’t have an accident and then it dragged for years and years. There is no explanation for it. Because the whole purpose of accident investigation is to come up with safety recommendations to prevent future occurrence. There must be lessons learnt”.
If you investigate and come up with safety recommendations, how would people learn to prevent future occurrence if the reports are kept somewhere. This is why it is very important. Accident investigation is a very serious business and we should all support it and make sure it is a serious agent of government in ensuring that our airspace is safe”, he added.
Speaking on accident investigation writing, resource person for the training which comprised personnel from Directorate of State Security ( DSS), Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Air Force, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority ( NCAA), AIB, Cape Verde, Gambia, Frostel noted that the objective of the whole accident investigation is prevention of accidents and incidents and the need to have safety recommendations and safety actions to correct those deficiencies .
“The essential part is the report writing. You see, at times when you do a proper and good investigation, at times, the report writing is lacking with the problem not being understood”, he stated.
