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How funds paucity stalls accident investigations, by Olateru
- Training for 22 crash investigators
There are indications that the inability to continuously train accident investigators by the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) for over a decade may have led to delays in concluding accident reports.
This was accentuated by lack of funding, which before now left the country’s accident investigative body prostrate.
Commissioner, AIB, Mr. Akin Olateru, confirmed these in a chat with Woleshadare.net in Lagos.
To this end, 22 staff of AIB are billed to travel to the United States to receive On the Job Training (OJT) at the National Transport and Safety Board (NTSB) on air crash investigation.
This was accentuated by lack of funding, which before now left the country’s accident investigative body prostrate.
Commissioner, AIB, Mr. Akin Olateru, confirmed these in a chat with Woleshadare.net in Lagos.
To this end, 22 staff of AIB are billed to travel to the United States to receive On the Job Training (OJT) at the National Transport and Safety Board (NTSB) on air crash investigation.
Capacity building in the aviation industry however, received a boost as the agency recently partnered the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the United States of America for a one-week training in accident/incident investigation, for the benefit of the entire West African sub region.
The workshop, which was facilitated by the two international organisations, seeks to deepen the knowledge, and sharpen the skills of the participants drawn from AIB, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), domestic airlines and members of the Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency (BAGAIA).
Tagged ICAO Accident/Incident Investigation Workshop and holding in Lagos from September 25, 2017, the training would navigate the participants through various aspects of accident investigation including Annex 13 guidance materials; investigating organizational factors and human performance; records investigation; investigating rotorcraft accidents and incidents; on-site investigation and flight recorders.
Olateru said, “We are very pleased to be partnering with ICAO and NTSB on this important training. We value the cooperation and technical assistance we have been receiving from these organizations, which would greatly complement our efforts to make AIB formidable.
“Capacity development, infrastructural improvement, system and process re-engineering remain our focus in making sure that AIB contributes meaningfully to aviation safety for the common good of all.
“So soon thereafter and as a follow up to the classroom experience, AIB investigators trained at this workshop would be constituted into two teams and would proceed on ‘On the Job Training’ (OJT) with NTSB in the United States and the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) in Singapore. While the first team proceeds to the NTSB sometime in October 2017, on their return, the next team would proceed to Singapore in November 2017”.
They also covered fire investigation, managing large scale accident and incident investigation, emergency response and record investigation among others.
The facilitators included the Managing Director of NTSB, Mr Dennis Jones, who for many years was the NTSB representative in Africa and Mr Andre de Kock from ICAO.
Plateau said: “Capacity building is so vital to AIB’s job functions. This guarantees that all reports and safety recommendations issued out by AIB is hoisted on the certainty that they do not miss out any vital subject matter in their investigations that impacts safety. Consequently, practical hands-on training, which is what an OJT is all about cannot be ‘one too many’, when it comes to training.
“As a matter of fact, NTSB downloads over 500 CVR and FDR (Black Boxes) annually: this is without a doubt one of the best environments to learn from; affording real case studies, in real time, with up to date world standard equipment’s/laboratories and among the best trained and qualified investigating professionals”.
Accident Investigation Bureau is the agency charged with determining the causes of aircraft accident and serious incident with a view to preventing future reoccurrence of similar incident.
Speaking on paucity of funds that has affected training of investigators, Olateru recalled that when he took over as AIB Commissioner, ‘staff of the agency had not been trained for a long time because of paucity of funds’.
, adding that the agency immediately swung into action by initiating a meeting with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other international organisations to develop human capacity in the Bureau.
He acknowledged that funding has been a very big issue, stressing that the way to go about it is to think out of the box
