I got this from my email archives - an article published in Vanguard Newspapers a while back shortly after the BellView crash in 2005. Sad to say, all the issues raised by the Capt are still plaguing the Nigerian Aviation Sector till date.


Why our airspace is dangerous - Capt. Tito

By Omoh Gabriel

The crash of Bellview airplane and several other crashes by local airlines in the last two months have brought to the fore the inherent danger in air travels in Nigeria. One man who should know happenings in Nigeria Aviation industry is Retired Captain Omaghon Tito who worked with Nigeria Airways as a pilot for 35 years.

Captain Tito two weeks ago was the guest of Vanguard Board of Editors. In a no holds barred discussion, he provided a frightening insight into the inherent dangers in flying local airlines, describing the operations in the industry as that of a "molue' in the air. Tito avowed that operators rather than pilots now decide when and how to use an airplane contrary to international convention in the aviation industry.


Excerpts:

I am here not to discuss the Bellview crash as such, but by the time I finish my presentation to you, you then add one and one together and deduct what probably happened in the said
crash.

In the Aviation industry we have what is called MEL - minimum equipment lease. In Nigeria, we have a situation where regulations are not complied with by local airline operators.

The minimum equipment lease by regulation say if there is a malfunctioning part of an airplane, provided some basic parts are functioning in the airplane, you can take it to where repairs could be effected. In Nigeria, Lagos is the hub, the base where all other flights and airplane are brought to be repaired. We know that the
local airlines operators as of today, have cautioned their pilots not to record snags on their check log because, when you start recording one snag, two snags, three snags and it gets to the requirement of minimum equipment lease, MEL, the airplane is grounded, you cannot go.

The local airline operators have turned this whole thing into a molue kind of operation. I flew Nigerian Airways planes for 35 years and those of who have been flying that long will recall being told very often at the Nigeria Airways counter: "ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry we are delayed for technical reasons." Seventy five per cent of Nigerians Airways delays at
that time were caused by technical reasons because the pilot will not accept an airplane that is not airworthy.


Today, only 25 per cent of these local airlines attribute their delays to technical reasons, the rest are either as a result of weather or something else such as operational. So we have found ourselves in a situation where the operators now determine what happen in flights and the law says the captain is the final authority in the operation of the airplane. That is what the law says.


Today local airline operators have shifted that law, the operators are now the final authority as to the operation of their airplane for their own selfish interest. To worsen the already bad situation, most Nigerian pilots are hungry people. I wouldn't mince words, they are paid according to the number of flights they do and the number of hours they log. So if any particular pilot refuses to fly a plane for safety reasons by saying I will not accept this airplane because it is not airworthy, somebody is standing by to go.

That brings me to a publication in your paper, the publication of the 2nd or 3rd of this month, the Minister of Aviation indicted herself by trying to spell out the qualification of the late Bellview captain and the number of hours he has flown. You will see that he did 1,200 hours in 10 months. That is an indictment, if any of my relative was on that flight, based on that publication alone I will sue that airline, I will sue NCAA, they cannot recover because their own publication has said that the man was doing an average of 120 hours every month.

The maximum is 100 hours a month, 1,000 hours in a year, but the publication I read in your paper, said 1,200 in 10 months, can you imagine? That is an indictment. In short pilots are being used, misused and abused by local air line operators and the irony is they cannot say they will not fly.


Now let's talk about Aviation:

The radar, you gentlemen know that the radar used in Nigeria today does not operate on weekends. Secondly, it is the oldest radar anywhere in the world.

It was manufactured in Italy several decades ago, and it has been phased out due to advancement in technology. The last time it had problems, they have to search and search before they saw the needed parts in one store in USA in one village airport. That was where they got the spare part for that radar which they brought and put, before it started working. If it breaks down today, forget it, because the manufacture would say this particular model
has long been phased out.

Let me tell you about the frightening aspect of your flight, when Nigeria

Airways used to fly, you know it was the only airline in the world where you were made a captain only when you have flown 6,000 hours under supervision, you have logged 6,000 hours under supervision as a co-pilot. The airline management then will send you to Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, to train and compete with your colleagues in those choice airlines and if you make their grade as a captain, it is only then the Nigerian
Airways will give you your first bar. That training practice is no more.

When I go to the airport these days to board a flight I take my time to find

out who the pilot is. If I am not sure of the competence of the pilot, I take my bag and go back to my house. This is the terrible situation in the Nigerian aviation industry, because people become commanders in our aircraft now under 1,000 hours. What will he do under emergency. In actual fact emergency does not kill. That is the truth. Emergencies do not kill. It is your action during an emergency that will make or break you. I recall 14th of April 1991, I flew the Airbus that overran the Murtala Mohammed Airport with 245 people on board on a Sunday morning. The runway was water logged, 12 hours after the accident the manufacturers came and took the black box away, they investigated and I was given a citation for a job well done in an emergency situation.

This is why I tell you emergency don't kill. But when you have people who are half baked flying people all over the world, then there is a big problem. I decided to come here today because Mr. President has hit the nail on the head that the entire aviation sector in Nigeria is corrupt. My only exception to that statement is the new minister, who has just taken over. He has not been long enough in office for him to commit any fraud, but all the directors, I challenge them to an open national debate. NCAA as far as I am concerned is a crying shame.


The inspection of airplane:

We have a very sad thing happening in respect of airplane inspection. You have an airline and you want to acquire an airplane. Quote me. Where the man who is inviting you to inspect his airplane is responsible for your estacode, for your air ticket, for your hotel accommodation and money for shopping, what moral justification have you got to inspect his airplane and say, the plane is not in good condition. This is what is happening at NCAA,
and these examiners or inspectors travel abroad with airline operators to inspect their planes. Rather than do actual inspection, they look at the airplane from a distance, and move to town on shopping spree. They come back, load that airplane with their goods and curiously they do not have the courage to fly that particular airplane back to Lagos. They will say, old boy, we meet in Lagos. They take a different flight back home. That is the kind of inspectors we have.


Talking of licensing:

In practice, every pilot must do a medical, once a year. He needs a first class medical report. Co-pilots do the same thing. Every six months, pilots do their simulator checks. The essence of a simulator check, gentlemen is the fact that there are certain things you don't do with the airplane because it is too expensive to start troubles shooting in the air. So the simulator, which is made in such a manner that once you enter, psychologically you feel you are in an airplane life performance. It takes you up to 26,000 feet and at that attitude they simulate loss of cabin pressure which me and you should know that if your airplane is not pressurized over 8,000 feet you cannot sustain any life. That is why they take you to 25,000 feet, to simulate that you have lost pressurization. Under such a situation the captain is expected (he has 15 seconds for TUC, time of useful consciousness) to put on his oxygen mask and get the airplane down in 15 seconds to 10,000 feet, otherwise everybody will black out in that airplane, these are checks.


Engines:

You may lose an engine during take off or develop engine fire, loss of hydraulic. Simulator is the place you practice all these emergencies before you can go on and be flying. And when any of these situations arises, there is no problem, you handle it with confidence. That is why the white man tells you that you will lose your cabin pressure one day, have an engine
fire, lose your hydraulic. Inside the simulator you go from normal operations to abnormal, then go to emergency. This is the only time we go once every six months to simulate all these problems. But you will be shocked that pilots nowadays do not go for this any more, they just take simulation forms and sit down in their houses, in Kaduna, Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu or wherever they are based and tick, tick, tick and sign the forms as if they have undertaken the exercise. They put small money in an envelope and go to NCAA and have their licenses renewed.

Those who have opportunity of going to where these facilities are in use abroad know that there are standard procedures and the numbers of hours you need to do it. Some go today, tomorrow they are back. It is so scary now that I have told them I will not be caught dead in an airplane any more. That is one aspect of it. This is where we have found ourselves in this country, people have been shouting about the Bellview that crashed. I was shocked when I heard that they went 500 miles in the Atlantic looking for it, they went to some other side, looking for it, the basic student will tell you, every flight that leaves Lagos or anywhere in the world flies a flight plan.

What is the use of the flight plan? To know your routing. So when something happens to you in the air, they come looking for you on your route that you have filed, there is no deviation. Nothing. For them to have gone for 14 hours looking for a crashed plane that long, I do not want to comment on it, to say the least, it was a criminal negligence.



Limagol

What they call limagol, it is a facility in Iju, it is a radio facility, that is where everybody first call. No matter how you take off from Lagos, you will come back to that radio facility which beams signals 360o, your route falls on one of those degrees. You are going to Kano you fly 046 degree. You are going to Port Harcourt, you fly 163 degree. From that facility, pilots take direction so that Bellview airplane took off one minute after that, it disappeared, the airplane was in our backyard burning away.

Nigeria is the only country in the world where a pilot who goes to prison and
return to fly a plane. If you go to jail in America, it is automatic revocation of your license.

Yes. People who were junkies, who were around the Ikeja airport, begging us money in the petrol station because they are on drugs. Today, they are employed. They are working. That is Nigeria for you.

People who fly airplane with both eyes open and are saying, by the way do you know that the late Captain Imasuen was attacked by hired assassin. He had attempted to defend his face from his attackers by using his hand to cover his face, they took his hands away and their bullets went into him through. This was a guy that had no place for 10 years when he was attacked, he was flown to the US for plastic surgery. He came to look for job and they employed him. The trauma he has gone through in life to be cut in an airplane in the night inside a thunder storm? That man flipped? That was the situation. But nobody is now talking about that. What was his medical condition? Who examined him after he had been shot in the face before he started working? Now, you are making him to fly hours every month. This is
what we should be looking at.

The airplane has crashed, it has crashed. I am convinced that they will not see the black box, because where the airplane crashed into, they started seeing human flesh on top of trees. That showed that those human flesh did not fly from the ground to top of the trees. The black box is always at the tail end of the airplane. You can add one and one and see what happened, that is that. Now Mr. President said if he did not have reliable Nigerians to run the country's aviation industry, he would hire expatriates. It is very welcomed. I was not surprised when I read in the papers yesterday or today that the MD of Virgin Nigeria has been relieved of his duty and that he would be staying in Nigeria for some time. It may not be unconnected with this expatriate thing the President said he was going to hire if he does not have the people to do the job. But the irony of it is that there are competent Nigerians to do this job. Well because these Nigerians are not going to boot leak, lobby but they know them.

I hate to say this, we know the pioneers of aviation. If you go to FAA in USA, people in FAA all are retired pilots, Air Traffic controllers, Engineer. These are the people manning aviation up to their space centre. What are you bringing a civil servant to run in Aviation in this country? We should go back and look, people like Captain Hayes who retired in this country. When you call aviation you call captain Hayes, Captain Obimaleye. Those are the old ones. They know what it takes to formulate all our policies because they have used first class facilities all over the world. They know what these facilities are on ground, they have used the facilities all over the world. You used them. They have benefited from them. So if you appoint them, they know what to ask for. Aviation is very expensive you say? Try accident and see.

This is what we have just found ourselves. What happened to Bellview airplane crash, you cannot put a price on it. But these are the people who will tell you this airport needs this, you put it. This airport needs this, you put it. Government has enough resources to fight and give us a safe aviation industry. If you go into Saudi-Arabia, as a pilot you will close your eyes and fly around Saudi-Arabia. They have radar to tell you turn to this end, reduce your speed, turn to this direction and reduce your speed to 120. If you fly 125, they will call you, your speed is 5 knots in excess, reduce speed. These are facilities in Saudi Arabia. We come here to land, we can't land. We go to Cotonou and we land, the same weather that is affecting Lagos is affecting Cotonou.

Because everybody they have put in the aviation industry in Nigeria is there for self interests. That is what is happening to our aviation industry. So, let Mr. President, if he says he cannot find the people here, for your safety and my safety let him bring expatriates. It is a shame though.

Let them bring expatriates to come and run the aviation industry here. That is when you can go to sleep in this country. Air disaster will still happen, it will continue, that is the truth, our airlines are not safe because the controlling agency are cutting corners with them.

Let me share my experience with you. I met the late General Abacha in Graham Douglas's house when he was Minister of Aviation. I was with him with one of your former Editor, Frank Aigbogun and Abacha came in. And we started discussing about Air Force Plane 001, the Air Force One that carries Mr. President all over the federation. I told him sir, if all the pilots, all your crew in 001 are from Ogoni village and they are the best in this
business, please sir, let it be because no pilot wants to die in an aircraft. I told him the reason.

The following week, we were going to Sokoto for the turbaning of Alhaji Abubarkar Alhaji, General Abacha came to the airport, himself and the Minister of Aviation Graham Douglas, he entered Julius Berger airplane and asked me and my board members. Then I was a member of the board of NAA, to enter into the Air Force One airplane and we went. We got to Sokoto we could not land. We were in the plane overhead Sokoto, we saw seven approaches. The late Adisa was in that flight, about three state governors were there, Secretary to Federal Government was there. We saw this approach, another, seven times. It was one of my board member, Dr. Don Pedro who called me and said Oga Tito go and see what your people are doing there. So I removed my babariga, I went there and I knocked, opened the door.

The co-pilot, the an Air Force personnel had goose pimples all over his body. I tapped the man on the seat, he came down and I sat down. I said, ol' boy what is happening here? He told me that whenever they see the run way, it's either on the left or on the right. They've done eight approaches. I said I knew. What is the visibility? They said 600 metre, it was getting low. I looked at the instrument that measures your height from sea level. We
have a traffic patterned attitude to fly if we want to land, 1,500 feet, he was flying 1,500ft above ground level, 1,250ft which is Sokoto elevation. So that guy was at 2,700 and something feet, how would he see the runway?

So, I drew his attention, I say with this calls for a low settling approach. Go down to 500ft above the airport, keep the run way in sight, all your turns, use the captain on the left hand side, all your turns must be to the left, always keeping that runway in sight so that you don't miss it. I became an instructor. We went over the runway, we turned, he had the runway and I said tell me where you are and he said Captain I can see the run-way. I sad gear-down, co-pilot take time, 25 second, that was how he turned that plane and by the time we finished we touched down. Everybody at the airport had their hands on their heads because they had been watching that approach. So Adisa came down, once they opened the door for him, he said, ah! (Awon Air Force won gi o mon nkan nkam) meaning: these Air Force men don't know anything. He said but for Captain Tito, we were all gone. On our return journey, nobody agreed to enter that Air Force plane.


But gentlemen, the unfortunate aspect of this story I'm telling you is that three days after, that same crew took Abacha's son to Kano and they perished in the night. People who could not land the plane in the day time, they went to Kano in the night and that was it.

When that accident happened, Graham Douglas called me that the Commander-in-Chief said I should send him a memo on that accident. I said I would not send because he had set up a panel. The airport was the judge, the jury and the accused. That was how that matter ended.

That is the risk which people have been taking and I have told them, if they invite me to a national debate on TV tomorrow, nobody will go and enter airplane. I'm not running anybody down. I'm not looking for a job. I'm not looking for any position, but for Nigerians who will take their hard earned money to go and fly, we should do things right. This is one industry we must get right or we scrap it and we start all over again.



When Nigeria Airways used to park all their airplane on ground every 6 o'clock in the evening. All our flight terminates maximum 7.0'clock. You see all our airplane parked. It's not because we could not fly in the night, because we knew if we fell in the bush in the night, nobody will see us.That was the thinking, nobody will see us. That was the thinking, nobody
will search and rescue in the night in this country, that's why Nigeria
Airways parked.

The liquidation of Nigeria Airways is what has opened the floodgate of hell in aviation in this country because there was where the well trained people around were. Airlines now want to employ you, you are a pilot, they don't want to put money to train you. They ask you to go and get your rating on that airplane, come back and they will employ you. However you want to go and get your rating is not their business. They want to see it stamped on your license, they give you job. They are not prepared to put their neck out to train you. So, in this country we all just have to stand up to fight this corruption that has eaten into the aviation
industry, if you and me will be safe to fly from point A to point B.