One of the choppers operated by Bristow Helicopters in Nigeria
After the unfortunate air crashes that involved two of its aircraft in 2015 and 2016, Bristow Helicopters Nigeria Limited (BHNL) said it had taken self audit and relaunching its in house safety programme – Zero Target.
This was disclosed by the Managing Director of the helicopter services airline, Capt Dapo Oyeleke at Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos during an interview with aviation journalists at an aviation stakeholders’ safety workshop on Promoting Aviation Safety in Nigeria, organised by the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE)
“We are relaunching our Target Zero which is the initiative before the
incident. And that should be rolled out in another couple of weeks.
And it is all about the culture of the organisation what you do with
you heart leads your head and head to your hand. And without spilling
the beans I think you would see that coming out very soon.
We have built on Target Zero. We expanded Target Zero to include
customers’ complaints, customer down time and from Bristow stand
point, we actually thought maybe we diluted the message. Some of the
people that joined Bristow after we launched it 2005 and 2007 are
asking themselves what is actually target zero. What we are doing now
is to give rebirth to the whole message. It is the same target zero.
It is the same logo, but again to refresh it,” he said.
Oyeleke who said the company does not want to jump the gun on possible outcome of the reports of the investigations conducted into the crashes by Accident Investigation Bureau ( AIB), however, said the airline went through self audit and decided to raise its safety bar where needed.
“We are relaunching our Target Zero which is the initiative before the
incident. And that should be rolled out in another couple of weeks.
And it is all about the culture of the organisation, what you do with
your heart leads your head and head to your hand. And without spilling
the beans I think you would see that coming out very soon.
We have built on Target Zero. We expanded Target Zero to include
customers’ complaints, customers’ down time and from Bristow’s stand
point, we actually thought maybe, we diluted the message. Some of the
people that joined Bristow after we launched it in 2005 and 2007 are
asking themselves what is actually Target Zero. What we are doing now
is to give rebirth to the whole message. It is the same target zero.
It is the same logo, but again to refresh it,” he disclosed.
He added, “After the unfortunate event we went through an independent investigation we took all our pilots to complete training on simulators. Even though that was premature, because we don’t know what the outcome of the investigation would be, but in the course of that internal audit that we took, we found areas where we could improve and we are doing that regardless the outcome of the investigations.
“All are pilots have gone through additional simulator trainings,
notwithstanding, we do that twice in a year as minimum. You saw
somebody here with me, that is the Director of Aviation Safety. Part of what he is doing what we called “be safe”.
Oyeleke who regretted the conservative posture of the company in the past, said Bristow Helicopters Nigeria Limited is coming out with bigger media exposure to allow many Nigerians understand more about it and what it is doing.
“We have recognised the roles of not just aviation media but media in
general and some of what we are doing today is a step in that
direction.
“We actually engage the third party to get us the media to come into our business to see what we are doing. We allow them to fly in our aircraft and aeroplanes. The company itself is conservative by nature when people don’t know what you are doing, People don’t know what is Bristow, what is it doing? Yet we are doing a lot in the country. People don’t know we have thirty aircraft in Nigeria, people don’t know that 95 per cent of our staff are Nigerians,, People don’t know that we have trained over three hundred pilots in Nigeria. People don’t know we also operate aeroplanes, search and rescue services, and many others.
“We have introduced an aircraft here that nobody has introduced around Africa. We want to have a focus group approach to achieving this interaction”.
It would be recalled that Bristow Helicopters Nigeria limited had two of its choppers Sykorsky S76 C++ involved in two crashes in August 2015 and February 2016 in Nigeria.
The causes of the accidents were however traced to manufacturer’s errors and not lack of due diligence on safety on the part of Bristow Helicopters Nigeria Limited.
