Flying anxiety spikes over frequent air accidents

The three fatal commercial accidents of the past month — Jeju Air, Azerbaijan Airlines and now American Airlines — are symbolic of a changing aviation landscape. The frequent incidents in Nigeria’s aviation industry are equally assuming an unsettling trend, writes, WOLE SHADARE

 Strings of accidents/incident

The mid-air collision last Wednesday night over the Potomac River near Washington DC is the latest in many global incidents with many air travellers on edge.

There are believed to be no survivors of the American Airlines crash, which comes on the heels of deadly Jeju Air and Azerbaijan Airlines accidents in December and about a year after an alarming Boeing door panel blowout and a separate fiery runway collision in Japan.

In 2023, a string of near-collisions at US airports spurred the creation of a new independent safety review team.

Nigeria has had its fair share of scary incidents involving many airlines, particularly, Max Air, Azman and Allied Air that have put the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to task.

Nigeria’s example

Aside from that, the frequent air incidents and near misses in Nigeria’s aviation industry whose volume is negligible compared to other places like the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have led to concern and raised questions about whether it is very safe to fly.

The NCAA is equally worried not because it failed to do its work but has stepped up oversight of the airlines and their operations to forestall full-blown accidents.

The agency is to begin a comprehensive audit of Max Air which B737-400 aircraft was involved in a serious incident at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport (MAKIA) Kano late Tuesday night.

NCAA’s Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, Mr Michael Achimugu noted that the aviation regulatory body had commenced organizational risk profiles for each scheduled operator, including Max Air, noting however, that due to the recent incident, Max Air had decided to suspend its domestic flight operations to allow for an internal appraisal of its operations.

He disclosed that the economic audit would critically examine the financial health of the airline to guarantee its capability to sustain safe flight operations, just as the resumption of Max Air’s domestic flight operations would be predicated on the satisfactory completion of this audit.

He explained that during the three-month suspension period which commences on January 1, 2025, the NCAA will conduct a thorough safety and economic audit on Max Air, stressing that the audit would examine the airline’s organization, procedures, personnel and aircraft.

Understandably, anxiety around flying has spiked. So should passengers be concerned?

A frequent traveller who gave his name as John Ukachukwu who spoke to Aviation Metric said, “I don’t know that passengers should be worried, but I think it’s important for the flying public to be vocal and demand that the government and the different entities do everything possible to make air travel as safe as possible.”

He however noted that statistically speaking, “You’re safer in your flight than you were driving in your car to the airport”.

Restoring confidence

Like in Nigeria and other places, letting investigators do their jobs to find out what went wrong and advise on what needs to be done differently is essential to restore confidence in aviation even though Nigeria’s NSIB and the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) do not have regulatory powers.

The safety recommendations that stem from aviation safety investigative bodies must be accepted and implemented by other agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the NCAA, and they’re not always adopted or can take years to implement.

These according to aviation safety experts would ensure that the gap needs to be closed.

While it’s too soon to know precisely what factors contributed to accidents that just occurred like Wednesday’s tragedy, not a few believe that it has been a troubling trend for the global aviation industry.

The series of close calls at US airports in early 2023 prompted the FAA to create an independent safety review team.

Regulatory oversight

Its November 2023 final report   cited inconsistent funding, outdated technology, short-staffed air traffic control towers and onerous training requirements among the issues “rendering the current level of safety unsustainable.”

The agency announced some immediately related to hiring and training new air traffic controllers. A longstanding shortage of controllers continues to put strain on US airspace.

While these findings are shocking considering that the US is considered the bastion of aviation in the world, the Nigerian aviation regulatory body, the NCAA needs to equally appraise its operations by staffing its airworthiness directorate with some of the best and most experienced hands.

Over the years, that department or directorate had been found wanting, ranging from alleged inducement by airline operators to waive serious safety infractions among other unprofessional conducts.

The directorate had been alleged to be peopled by many appointed by Ministers as a retirement home for people who had no business to be in that position. It is a reward scheme for government appointees to their acolytes.

Many of the air traffic control technologies are outdated which the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo admitted needs replacement while the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) is on the verge of recruiting many more air traffic controllers to overcome short-staffed air traffic control towers.

Aviation still safe

Despite ongoing challenges, the safety statistics are reassuring for the global aviation industry.

“We’re now only about 1/38th as likely to die in a plane accident compared to the levels of the late 1960s and 1970s,” says a former Assistant Secretary-General of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Mohammed Tukur.

In its most recent safety report, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association of the world’s airlines, called 2023 “an exceptionally safe year,” with a total of 30 accidents in the commercial aviation sector.

Among jet aircraft, there were no fatal accidents or hull losses in 2023, resulting in a “record-low” fatality risk rate of 0.03 per million sectors.

“On average a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident,” the report says.

One accident in 2023, involving a Yeti Airlines turboprop plane, resulted in 72 fatalities. That marks a decrease from five accidents causing 158 fatalities in 2022.

IATA will release its 2024 report in February or March, a spokesperson said.

Research sourced by Bloomberg, however, suggests that 2024 was the deadliest year for aviation since 2018.

 More than 500 people were killed in 2018 in plane crashes, including the Lion Air accident, the first of two crashes caused by problems with the Boeing Max aircraft.

A professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arnold Barnett highlights aviation safety’s substantial improvement over many years.

 “The systems broke down,” he says of this week’s crash. While he refuses to speculate on what happened until the official reports are out, he says that within a month we’ll see the preliminary recommendations for the prevention of future accidents.

Last line

Not a few are hopeful belief that this week’s tragedy will bring weaknesses in the current aviation system to light and hopefully putting the spotlight and attention on those weaknesses will give the authorities a good chance to improve in any areas that they need to improve in

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