Oketumbi
Mr Tunji Oketumbi, Head, Public Affairs, Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), explains factors that could result in air crashes. Assistant Editor (Investigations) JOKE KUJENYA met him
Past reports of aviation mishap probes
As a matter of fact, they are often made public. And if you go to our website, you will find loads of past reports there that you can download. Yet, I agree with you that there are a few of the reports that have not come out. And they may come out late for several reasons. For one, accident investigations are not ‘instant coffee’. It is something that involves lots of processes. And one accident is different from the other. So, some of the processes could be elongated, especially where certain components or evidences are missing. And so, we usually need to look for all these components or evidences for all the investigations to be complete. Then, there are some high profile accident reports that some people are expecting to have been released. But we have done them and the government will soon release them to the best of my understanding. So, some of those in the past, the investigations have been completed and statutorily, we report to the President through the Aviation Minister, who had submitted them. However, there are some institutional challenges, I must admit. And we expect that those ones will be addressed in the amendments we are doing to our regulations.
AIB role in air mishap probe
It is self-explanatory. From the name, it means we are the bureau that is saddled with the responsibility of investigating accidents. And the next thing one might be tempted to probe is what type of accidents do we investigate? Well, we investigate aircraft disasters. And according to Civil Aviation Act 2006, sub-section 29, AIB is a body charged with the task of investigating airliner calamities and every serious incident with a view to proffering safety recommendations that will be used in preventing re-occurrence.
Black boxes
AIB is beyond having a black box inside airplanes. Black Box is just a tool for us at the AIB to conduct investigation. In itself, it is not enough in the instances of air mishaps. Now, there are usually two black boxes in every plane but they are co-located. The first one is the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), which gathers operational data from the systems in the aircraft. Then, there are censors in various parts of the airliners as well that garner all the information which are channelled to the FDR. It also provides investigators clues about speed, time, horizontal stability, vertical acceleration and problems with the two engines, if any, the avionics, control surfaces and several others. So, the FDR collects all these minute details as well as the parameters range from the eleven to perhaps over one hundred. All these are what help us in our investigations so we would be able to know whether or at what time or stage in the flight the engines packed up; is it one or the two engines that packed up at the same time... So, FDR records moments before the crash from take-off point. As you know, no one, including the crew, survived the Sunday, June 3 DANA crash. So, how would we know what went wrong without the FDR.
Then, there is the second component, the Cock-pit Voice Recorder (CpVR), which records every bit of sounds in the cockpit. It records the conversations among the pilots and the entire crew, between the crew and the control tower, between the crew and another aircraft in case of crossing their respective pathways as well as between the crew and the ground station. Even when a pin drops, the CpVR picks the sound no matter how ‘silent’ it may be considered.
This is what usually helps us investigators to know the state of minds of the entire crew by what they say. Were they panicky or calm through it all? We will then download the data in these two components to be able to arrive at a verifiable conclusion. However, we can also know the conversations between the pilot and the control tower from the information gathered at the tarmac because we have another tape at the tower. And in this case, the information has been impounded for safety already.
Taking black boxes to the U.S.
Good question. That is because we don’t have the laboratory to do the downloading here in Nigeria. Already, we have initiated the process of purchasing and setting up our own in Nigeria. We are hoping that if we get enough financial support from the government, we should be able to have this facility soonest.
A plane developing fault in the air without previous signs Aircraft are mechanical and anything perfunctory
can develop problems without previous warnings. Just like we too, as humans, can develop issues anytime without prior warnings, let alone a mere machine. But largely, it also depends on what the problem with a particular airplane is. But you have to know that aircraft are built in such a way that most of their components have back-ups so that if one engine is faulty, for instance, the second helps till the plane gets to a very safe destination. And it is also very rare for the two engines or components of any airline to develop problems at the same time. But if the two engines now happen to be lost at once in any situation, then, we have a very serious problem on our hands. And many other things have back-ups as well, which does not mean that they might not have problems. Once there is problem, they have been trained to quickly divert to an alternative airport close-by depending on where and when it happens.
Reasons planes go down
If you want to classify that, we can say that over 80 per cent of air crashes is due to human errors. But the analyses from various data that have been supplied and which can be easily accessed from the Internet; crew error –that is, crew judgment, what they say, their actions or in-actions, account for about over sixty per cent. But mechanical or air worthiness account for perhaps just about thirteen per cent while weather could account for a little percentage with prior caution from the control tower. But let me just say that human factors and we are not just limiting this to pilot errors, which also is an action that is triggered by certain cumulative effects due to a chain of reactions. What I am saying is that fatality is not just the exact result of the action taken at the point of attempts to avert crisis. We cannot rule out the possibility of an error from the air traffic controller. If you recall the accident involving an ADC Airline in 1995 at Ejinrin in Lagos, it began remotely by the action of the air traffic controller who mistakenly directed two aircraft along the same path. They both were coming against each other. But fortunately, there was Traffic Avoidance Collision System mechanism on the airplanes. So it started beeping to the entire crew alerting them: ‘You got traffic... Climb or go low...’ The takers are made to sound audibly so the plane crew can hear it. So, in the process of avoiding the collision, they might have pressed a wrong button and the plane crashed. So, that was a human error that started with the human traffic controller who had forgotten that he cleared two aircraft to tow the same air ways. Although he later corrected himself, but it was the crew error that eventually caused the crash. They agreed to go to a certain level against the advice of the air traffic controller who also was telling them to go to a particular flight level. And by the time he went to the level suggested by his own crew, he encountered another unavoidable traffic. And in the process of avoiding the new traffic, there was a collision.
Safety of the Nigerian airspace
The Nigerian air space is very safe. But there are a lot of issues involved. One, aviation is a regulated industry. And you cannot say because there is one accident, you then declare our airspace unsafe. Several things contribute to either air or land accidents. Coupled with human error, weather, training, organisational challenges in airline management, infrastructural deficiencies, but in the last few years, since 2006, in particular that Nigeria had a spate of accidents, the government tried to beef up in the area of infrastructure. So now, we have good radar system, air space lighting, Instrument Landing System (ILA), that is the equipment that helps the plane to be aligned to the center-line of the runway and navigational needs that could enhance safety in our flight operations. And though things may not be perfect yet, but then, if the subsisting rules and regulations are complied with, weather conditions are well observed and cautions adhered to, there would be minimal air accidents. But no one can totally eradicate occasional accidents anywhere in the world.
Responses to emergency
That is a different thing entirely and not just an aviation problem alone. This has become our general nuance. And it has to do with what has become somehow ‘cultural’ with the way we run things in our country. What I mean is that our state of preparedness is abysmal. We don’t prepare ahead for emergencies in the country as a lifestyle until we have situations on hand. We don’t plan ahead or envisage eventualities. So, slow responses to emergencies are not just about aviation; but about us as a nation and as a people. An overall approach is to look at the state of our fire fighters and emergency agencies at the moment and upgrade them in readiness for battles. There is a particular agency invested with the law to manage emergencies –NEMA –but what is the level of equipments and training of the concerned officials you may want to ask? We also have the aeronautical search and rescue officials. And everything in aviation is guided by rigorous rules and regulations but what we need is more coordination and enforcement.
Averting future crashes
We must understand that aviation is not a local business. It is an international venture that is guided by strict volumes of standard procedures and practices. So, if these stipulations are not violated but duly followed to the latter, conscientiously and diligently, and firmly enforced, we will barely have accidents or in the least, minimal crashes. The industry is evolving every day, regularly introducing fresh regulations and initiatives, Safety Management Systems (SMS), so that each airline operator will passionately embrace safety in the way they run their businesses. All that is now required is for each organisation to follow these rules in their daily operations and management systems.
Written by Adewunmi Akinpelu
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