The weather does not kill, attitude does.

The fatal crash of Sosoliso was not the fault of the weather, the weather was merely a contributory factor. The blame lies solely on the captain who has the exclusive right of decision on whether to land or not to land.

Aviation regulations say that the captain, not air traffic control, nor management or any other party shall make decision with respect to the safe conduct of a flight. The Captain decides if the aircraft is safe to fly, if the weather permits take offs and if he should complete a landing at a specific airport or divert to another. The reason is that the fate of the passengers lies in his/her hands and he controls the vehicle at least for now, until we have airplanes that fly themselves.

In the Sosoliso tragedy, while we await the actual cause of the accident to be analyzed from the cockpit voice recorder and black box, we can at least make some deductions. There was no reported distress call so nothing to indicate that the aircraft was malfunctioning. The weather was reported to be bad, even the statement of one of the parents on the way to airport indicated this. As a result, we have to look at the possibility that the pilot made a decision to land the aircraft in bad weather, having tried a number of earlier times to make the approach and landing.

Now this is where my issue of attitude comes in. Every aircraft operating commercially, that is (carrying paying passengers) must carry enough fuel to get to its destination or on the alternate to divert to an alternate airport up to 45 minutes away. This pilot despite the reported bad weather chose to land at Port Harcourt airport when others had aborted their landing there. The end result is recent history.

I have flown numerous times within Nigeria and to balance the truth, I wish there was a choice. But the state of the nation’s air travel industry is not the topic. It is attitude. A side note, I predicted to friends that the ADC pilot who crashed in Kano will someday crash because I had flown in his aircraft a number of times.

I recently did a lecture on Security in Nigeria and on the issue of identification; I asked the participants to hand over their driver’s licenses. Eighty percent of the licenses I collected were fake. The holders of the license had never even visited the states where their driver’s licenses had been issued. At least they should have gone to the licensing offices to complete the form and take a picture to collect the license, let’s forget for the now the issue of taking a driving test.  If any of those people had an accident and a claim was filed against them, how would they defend their driving record? I wonder how many bus drivers carrying millions of people daily actually have a driver’s license. Again attitude!

Is it attitude that says an airplane in need of critical service can wait until the last flight at night to get fixed? Is it attitude that says that there are passengers to continue the flight from Port Harcourt to Enugu so we have to land in Port Harcourt? Is it attitude that says that Third Mainland Bridge has not fallen down so it can wait on maintenance? Is it attitude that says that the educations system is not yet in need of a fix?

Do I need to go on? I think that it is time to analyze our sense of priorities; Nigeria does not fly the oldest aircraft in the world. I for one used to fly a 45 year old airplane but the critical parts were new and/or regularly serviced and when the weather was bad and I had flown to a destination far from home, I would rent a car and drive myself home.

By the way I decided to go City Hall to renew my own license. The genuine license was cheaper to renew than the fake sold outside.