Before the EU Air Ban

I was on my way to honoring an official invitation by a sister-regulatory agency in Abuja mid-November when I stumbled on an old acquaintance at the lounge as we both waited for our separate, though same destination-bound, flights.

I remember joking about a possible crash and its potential to make my spouse and children $100,000 richer! He boarded two hours earlier while I spent that period alone mentally conceiving the obituary of every intended traveler I could sight in the “waiting hall.” I realized that I had never visualized anyone’s demise before the October 22 crash, which, incidentally, claimed a friend of mine.

Coincidentally the European Parliament would vote overwhelmingly, the day after I arrived in Abuja, to establish and publicize a blacklist of deadly airlines that would be barred from flying in the European Union (EU). Twelve days after the European decision and 24 hours after I returned to Lagos, the same aircraft I traveled in had to make a return flight to the Ikeja airport five minutes after take-off for Abuja due to hydraulic leakage.

And eight weeks after the Bellview incident, Nigeria suffered yet another air disaster involving a Sosoliso DC-9 aircraft, whose age was put at 37!, just as it made a fatal descent to Runway 21 of the Port Harcourt International Airport; 103 people, mostly very bright students, lost their lives in the process.

A string of deadly crashes around the world this year alone actually compelled the European Commission to adopt the blacklist initiative as proposed by the Union’s executive Commission in February. On August 16, a day away from my birthday, there was a tragic irony in the Italian skies as Tunisia’s Tuninter Airlines’ turboprop plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea off Sicily, killing 16 people! The fuel tank was later found to be the wrong model whose reading in the cockpit misled the crew.

On the same day, a Columbian plane chartered by West Caribbean Airways crashed in Venezuela, terminating the lives of 152 tourists who had hoped they would reach their Martinique island destination safely. Worse still, two days before the crashes, a Cypriot airliner operated by Helios Airways had crashed into a mountain near Athens killing 121 people. I recall that Britain was the first country to publish a blacklist, last year, after a Flash Airlines Charter heading for Paris from Egypt crashed into the Red Sea, killing everyone aboard, including 133 French citizens.

Between France and Belgium, a total of 15 airlines have been banned and they include International Air Services of Liberia, Air Mozambique, Africa Lines of Republic of Central Africa, Central Air Express of Democratic Republic of Congo, ICTTPW of Libya, International Air Tours Limited of Nigeria, Johnsons Air Limited of Ghana and Silverback Cargo Freighters of Rwanda.

It is interesting that in addition to axing Cameroon Airlines, Britain bans all operators from Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Tajikistan.

It is an unfortunate revelation that JAT Airways, the Serbian National Airline, sold the ageing DC-9 planes to Sosoliso when it realized that they could not meet the prevalent European standards because of loud noise levels which the jet’s two engines produce. If it is actually true that the JAT engineers who used to maintain the aircraft had complained about “poor safety and air control standards” in Nigeria, then the future may be bleak for our aviation industry. How, for example, can the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) defend the allegation that Nigeria’s radar is not only the oldest in the world (and as such, outdated) but does not work on weekends too?

That the private executive jet which crashed in Kaduna was registered in America has been refuted by the country’s National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). As a matter of fact, the United States government has asked its nationals including diplomatic staff not to patronize Nigerian airlines for safety reasons; the directive is also binding on EU diplomatic staff.

Though air travel is the safest and fastest, the tragic accidents we have experienced lately should give us a push to improve safety standards more than ever before. Airlines should be genuinely assessed on maintenance of aircraft, modernity of technical standards and problems of safety management. The NCAA should pay closer attention to air operations and flight crew licensing, and be made to set up working groups from whom it will get input on various technical issues toward an enhanced regulatory process.

Poorly maintained, antiquated or obsolete aircraft should be phased out, while foreign operators with modern aircraft may be encouraged to fly locally too. As Mr. President considers alternative means of safe transportation, perhaps this could be an opportunity to experiment with the BRT (bus rapid transit) system, which parades high-capacity, high-frequency buses whose speed is comparable to a “surface subway” in dedicated lanes. It is currently in use in Curitiba, a Brazilian city.

While we wait for the EU’s blacklist, which can be consulted on the Internet beginning next spring, this is a clarion call for our aviation industry to do everything possible to instill confidence in the traveling public.