Category: Aviation

A survivor of the December 10, 2005 Sosoliso Airlines crash Miss Kechi Okwuchi has criticised the country’s poor emergency rescue system.

This, she claimed, contributed largely to the death of over 107 passengers in the crash.

She said if emergency response had be prompt, more lives would have been saved.

Okwuchi, who was a pupil of Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, survived the crash in which 60 of her colleagues, died.

She is now a student of the University of St. Thomas, a private Catholic College in Houston, Texas, United States.

She spoke at the Memorial/Symposium and Presentation of the “60 Angels” Memorial Staff Residence to honour the dead 60 pupils

Okwuchi said if the airport had good rescue and emergency system, many of the victims may not have died.

After the crash, she said, there were other preventable crashes due to alleged poor air worthiness of the plane and poor decisions by the pilots which killed many innocent Nigerians passengers, including children.

Okwuchi, who has been on a long-term treatment, noted that the industry has improved since then.

“But while there is a level of risk in almost any endeavour, the frequency of plane crashes in our country increases this risk a hundredfold. I have friends that till this day when they board a plane anywhere in the world, they pray nonstop throughout the flight until that plane has landed safely. It’s even worse when they are flying within Nigeria, their own country,” she said.

For more improvement in the sector to work, she said other related factors, such as emergency and rescue, must also be in place.

The Chief Executive Officer Topbrass Aviation, Captain Roland Iyayi, has canvassed a three-tier structured licensing and operational structure for airlines.

He said in an interview that in Lagos the proposed licensing structure would be determined by the scale of operations of the affected airline. The regulatory framework, he said, would cater for the carrier according to the volume of operations.

He said the three-tier structure should include air taxis for airlines that use small propeller aircraft, regional operators, who utilise medium range aircraft and national airlines, which have capacity to fly across the country.

Iyayi said it did not make economic sense to put all scheduled operators under the same operational regime.

Calling for reduction in tariff and charges for airlines, he said only a reduction in the charges could stimulate the growth of the business.

He said the old tariff structure obtainable in the industry was long overdue for review.

Internal cooperation among domestic carriers appears the way to go if only the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) would encourage certification through domestic network alliance, he said.

Iyayi canvassed the need to reconsider the manpower aspect of the sector’s master plan, which he said was a key factor in its sustainability. All aviation agencies, he said, should be housed in one complex to reduce the time spent by operators while sorting out regulatory and other aeronautical issues.

He appealed to the government to make land available around the airport to enable private sector players have a window to invest in aeronautical and other businesses, which is in line with the airport city project.

Iyayi also canvassed the convocation of a stakeholders consultative forum, which would provide a platform for industry players to critique the problems of the industry and offer solutions to its seemingly intractable challenges .

Former spokesman of the defunct Nigeria Airways, Mr Chris Aligbe praised the airport remodelling initiative, which he said had saved the country from the dilapidated state of the terminals.

He said foreign carriers cannot establish a hub for Nigeria except the government facilitates the establishment of a national carrier.

The proposed national carrier, Aligbe said, should be free from government’s control and must be owned by the public.

He canvassed the removal of transit visa requirements for passengers connecting flights through Nigerian airports, saying that if such hurdle is cleared, the country would naturally become an aviation hub.

Aligbe said: ”Our airports, a few years ago, were a collective national shame. Today, the airports have changed. But beyond the remodelling of the airports, the government must consider ways and means of establishing Nigerian airports as hub because no foreign carrier will help us achieve that .

One way of doing this is by removing the hurdle of transit visa requirements. This way, he said, the country’s airports will continue to enjoy from the window of increasing passenger traffic, which would in turn increase aeronautical revenues.

Aligbe further said the national carrier the government intends to set up should be private sector-driven, where Nigerians should have substantial shares, while the government will only remotely have some equity in the carrier to give it national coverage.

AFRICA recorded the world’s highest rate of fatal commercial aviation accidents in 2013, despite increased local and international efforts to improve air safety in the region.

While Africa has just three per cent of global air traffic, crashes on the continent accounted for roughly 20 per cent of the 29 accidents and 265 fatalities world-wide involving passenger and cargo planes designed to carry the equivalent of at least 14 passengers.

The analysis was given by an affiliate of the Flight Safety Foundation, an advocacy group for global aviation safety based in Alexandria, Virginia, in the US.

According to the Aviation Safety Network (ASN), which released the year-end totals, there were six fatal crashes in Africa in 2013, compared with five the year before.

The rolling four-year annual average of fatal crashes in the region remained at five, based on the ASN’s latest data.

Last year’s tally includes crashes of three African passenger aircraft, the same number of passenger planes that went down in Russia, or parts of the former Soviet Union combined-a region with twice as many departures as Africa.

The numbers disappointed some leading aviation experts, who had anticipated improvement in the region’s performance. “It’s unfortunate that a lot of the effort” expended over the years to enhance air safety throughout Africa, hasn’t yielded the kind of return we had hoped to see,” said Kevin Hiatt, President and Chief Executive of the Flight Safety Foundation.

He said external experts and consultants have helped devise a strategic plan for the region. “It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of execution by local governments, or industry leaders. The next step may be to set up enhanced oversight to ensure constant follow-ups and progress reports,” he said. Hart is due in February to take-over as the top safety official for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry’s leading global trade group.

By contrast, the ASN summary indicated that global accident statistics continue to improve. With a total of 265 deaths last year from airliner accidents world-wide, it cites 2013 as “by far the safest year” ever in terms of commercial-aircraft fatalities.

Like other industry experts that track safety trends, the report indicates that 2013 nearly matched the record of low global airline accident rate reported a year earlier.

Passenger counts have been climbing steadily in a number of African countries as some economies expand, resulting in more business travels and prompting some startup carriers to launch new routes and attracting more first-time fliers.

By some estimates, African airline traffic will increase nearly as quickly as that of the Middle East and fast-growing Asian regions over the next few years.

The safety tally follows a 2012 declaration by African political and air-safety officials to halve the rate of the most common categories of accidents and serious incidents by 2016. The air-safety arm of the United Nations and IATA also back the initiative.