[size=18]FG Completes the First Black Box Flight Recording/Analysis Safety Laboratory in Africa- AIB Boss[/size]

In this interview with NKEM OSUAGWU, Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), Captain Muhtar Usman highlights some challenging and significant achievements in AIB since he came into office in December 2011.

Sir, what have been your major achievements and challenges in office?

As usual, when you come into a new office, you have to first assess the environment even though, I was an insider. So, I know some of the areas we needed to work on; the human capacity and equipment in particular. In the area of human resources, we intensified our trainings; we tried to improve a lot in terms of training because the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) recommends that a body like ours should be a body of professionals and the quality of the people that are to be employed as investigators should be of international standards. It is recommended that we should attract and retain qualified and experienced personnel in sufficient number and everybody knows that to attract and maintain aviation professionals is not cheap.

[b]We tried as much as possible to attract and retain them by improving the welfare of the staff members and also give them the relevant training because training is a tool for them to be able to perform.

On equipment, when I came in, we did not have that in place even though the process had started acquiring what we call the black box decoder. This is a flight safety laboratory, which is used to download and analyse recordings from aircraft involved in accident. In terms of equipment, we have the flight safety laboratory in place now, which has the capability of downloading, analysing flight recorders from aircraft whether involved in an accident or not. If it involves an accident, we use it to determine the cause of the accident and we can make recommendations to avoid future occurrences and we can use it proactively because the focus of AIB now is accident prevention.

In addition, the laboratory has the capability to animate those data that we collect, present them in a form of graphs to know what the aircraft was actually doing.

Furthermore, an approval has been given and the construction has already started for wreckage reconstruction hangar that is used to store, analyse wreckage from accidents. Our main focus now is to prevent an accident from happening and if it does happen, we should be able to know the cause and make safety recommendations to prevent other accidents from happening.

Parts of the challenges when we came into office was the absence of condition of service for our staff and we were able to get a temporary condition of service from the NCAA that was approved for us, which we have started implementing. We’ve been given the condition of service for two years pending the approval of the AIB’s own.[/b]



Why is AIB relocating to Abuja after the first attempt in 2008 failed?

First of all, I will like to say life is not static, two, as you noted, AIB was created in 2006 with the headquarters in Abuja. It was relocated to Lagos later and then there was a directive in 2008 for all the agencies in the sector to relocate their corporate headquarters to Abuja and the decisions were informed by so many things. There are several countries in the world which have their accident investigation department in their federal capitals. For instance, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), in the United States, which is equivalent to AIB, its headquarters is located in Washington D.C, which is the capital of the US.

The location of accident investigation agencies is not necessarily in an area where we have so many activities because we deal with research and development.

There are two sides to accident investigations; the onside and off-side investigation. The onside is what you need to gather as soon as possible and once you have a regional office that is nearby, they can always respond to it, the off-side is the one that you do in your office : analysis, interviews that you need to conduct in your office or even go to the operator or even the regulators and so on.

So, it is not really about where the most commercial activities are taking place, but a place that it is conducive to actually work. If you look at the number of times you have to get to Abuja from wherever you are to get things done, quantify the time, also quantify the cost, you will find out that it is much cheaper for the corporate headquarters of organisations to be around Abuja.



Was that why your management relocated the agency’s laboratory from Lagos to Abuja?

I don’t like the word relocate; I prefer to use the word locate. The laboratory was never relocated, but located in Abuja by the management. The practice worldwide is that the laboratories are located in the headquarters and I can tell you that since 2008 when the directive was given, the location of the laboratory started. If people are saying that we are now relocating to Abuja, it is a process that started way back in 2008. The laboratory was never located in Lagos, it was meant to be located at the AIB headquarters and it is located at the headquarters in Abuja. It wasn’t dismantled from here and moved to Abuja.



What are the major challenges of AIB?

Funding is a major challenge. government has been doing very well as I said, but we need much more because resources sometimes limit to accident investigation. Like in the case of Dana Air, we had to send the two engines out; the cost of shipping, the cost of doing the tear down to establish, cost a lot of money. People had to travel to other countries.

Before now, we used to do flight recorder outside Nigeria to decode the analysis, but government has come to our aid in this regards. We are the only country in Africa that has this capability now. That will save us time because the idea behind it is to cut down on time. As I told you earlier, accident investigation is a public service, they don’t charge for it, but then, you have to queue up to get your time. But if you have your own facilities, then, automatically, yours becomes a priority. That is the benefit we have by having our own and we are also able to support other people by bringing in their own recorder, we are also going to learn a lot and apply it in Nigeria because if we are able to see any hazard based on the data that we have from another country’s accident, we are automatically a party to an investigation.

http://leadership.ng/news/230913/limited-resources-hindering-accident-investigation-usman

Finally, we have been saved the SHAME of always taking the Black Box and other on-flight Equipments to the US and other Western nations for their Recording and Analysis anytime there is an Aircraft Accident.

NOW, other nations, esp African, would come to us to do their Analysis here.

ANOTHER PROMISE FULFILLED.

...... And, May God Continue to Bless the hard-working Minister Stella Oduah for Us all.

Amin.

It's naija! ..fresh fish!

The path here has been of great change...

Pako apako...

It's a nice development, though long over due.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear FG!

Thank you for trying...

But one basic request I ask of thee is to shut down or force Dana airline to do away with those craps they call planes and get new ones.

We just can't let them waste more lives.


Thanks.

taharqa:
Finally, we have been saved the SHAME of always taking the Black Box and other on-flight Equipments to the US and other Western nations for their Recording and Analysis anytime there is an Aircraft Accident.

NOW, other nations, esp African, would come to us to do their Analysis here.

ANOTHER PROMISE FULFILLED.

...... And, May God Continue to Bless the hard-working Minister Stella Oduah for Us all.

Amin.

In other words more inflow of foreign exchange..Naija we are definitely on the part to greatness

AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I CALLED "IKUKU OMA"

So no more air mishap?

thank God,not jona.

Fresh air!

Fresh Hair

amiskurie: thank God,not jona.

Yea! We thank God.

And u said gej shouldn't contest.

Na wa for dreamers o

Why is this thread not on the front page? I can see the thread titled "Lagos to..." on the front page while that titled "FG completes..." is wasting away behind the scene.@Moderators, do the RIGHT thing.

Move this thread to the frontpage.

#Fresh air

another ground breakin achievement..
fresh air till barca sells messi

Op,

It's not rosy yet. There are different categories of airplanes blackbox analysis laboratories, though it's nice to have one to acquire more experience but Nigeria still lack the indept expertise to handle complex blackbox investigation. Even some developed countries still seek assistance from countries with vast experience.

omanzo02: Op,

It's not rosy yet. There are different categories of airplanes blackbox analysis laboratories, though it's nice to have one to acquire more experience but Nigeria still lack the indept expertise to handle complex blackbox investigation. Even some developed countries still seek assistance from countries with vast experience.

taharqa,

@omanzo02 is absolutely correct here. It is one thing to celebrate the establishment of this laboratory but quite another to succumb to bombast, when we know that few countries actually carry out these complex investigations on their own.

AIB Interim Statement on DANA Air 0992 0f 03/06/2012
....
Extensive investigative activities have and continue to be conducted both domestically and in the US. The activities have included interviews of relevant personnel of the aircraft operator, the regulatory agency, service providers in addition to other personnel familiar with the operational and regulatory oversight aspects pertinent with the accident flight.

Footnote: something needs to be done about Accident Investigation Bureau website and fast.

eGuerrilla: taharqa,

@omanzo02 is absolutely correct here. It is one thing to celebrate the establishment of this laboratory but quite another to succumb to bombast, when we know that few countries actually carry out these complex investigations on their own.



Footnote: something needs to be done about Accident Investigation Bureau website and fast.

AIB Interim Statement on DANA Air 0992 0f 03/06/2012

2012?? The Flight Safety Laboratory was only recently established. In fact, some aspects of the programme is still not finished.

On the point @omanzo is trying to make, let me just declare my Ignorance on the subject. I do not know much about this, talkless of the complexity of the field; So he may be right. The important thing though is that the Crucial step has just been taken; other subsequent steps can now follow.

taharqa:

AIB Interim Statement on DANA Air 0992 0f 03/06/2012

2012?? The Flight Safety Laboratory was only recently established. In fact, some aspects of the programme is still not finished.

On the point @omanzo is trying to make, let me just declare my Ignorance on the subject. I do not know much about this, talkless of the complexity of the field; So he may be right. The important thing though is that the Crucial step has just been taken; other subsequent steps can now follow.

Yes, establishing one is indeed a crucial step, what I expect Nigeria to do is go into cooperation with other laboratories to get our men and women involve in their investigation, exchange of expertise, we don't have to sit idle till Nigeria have a air mishap for our lab to function.

I have been to the lab in Brussels, it's high tech department and those guys have eyes and nose for tracking the unseen, still they seek assistance sometimes from colleagues in other countries. It usually under the safety board and responsible for certification of planes air worthiness and they never bent the rules.

Since

Stories never hit front page. Ar the mods sleeping?

Gej till 2019 pdp

At last.

I hope there will be no need to use the lab, we don't need anymore plane crash. However,
how did they know it's the first in Africa? I always hear phrases like that whenever our govt does something

Gud for una

AASU ongoing deadlock,

NARTO, NASU to go on strike nextweek

AP0 10 murders,

Shekau is still alive (after our govt was boasting that they killed him),

Unemployment,

Corruption at its highest,

Oil theft,

Salary now probability, etc etc etc


#
Yet, sycophants are shouting GEJ 2015 cos of a laboratory for an aeroplane's black box



#. . . What kind of specie are these people for God's sake

amiskurie: thank God,not jona.

God should prevent the crashes from happening in the first place

.