Dana Air pilot acted unprofessionally - Captain Tito Written by Shola Adekola and Yejide Gbenga-Ogundare(Nigerian Tribune)

WITH the release of the preliminary report on the cause of the Dana Air crash at Iju/Ishaga, Lagos, National President, Concerned Aviation Professionals (CAP), Captain Tito Omaghomi, on Tuesday, said that the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft acted unprofessionally.

Omaghomi, a former pilot with the defunct Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL), made this assertion while speaking to newsmen on issues in the aviation sector. He said the profile of the pilot of the crashed plane should be traced to know how he got 120 hours of flight time between the time he was employed and when the plane crashed on May 3, 2012.

“He was employed by Dana Air on March 14,  2012. He began flying line operations for the company in late May 2012 and had since accrued over 120 hours of flight time,” Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) had said.

Comparing it with the pilot hour of what obtained in NAL, Omaghomi said that for a pilot to become a captain in NAL, he must have flown 6,000 hours.
He argued that from the little released by the AIB, it was clear that both the captain and the first officer acted unprofessionally by not using the normal check list and not telling Nigerians when they lost the first engine.

He said, “the pilot did not use the check list. They acted unprofessionally. It was like a cowboy operation.”
While noting that the greatest emergency that could happen was the loss of cabin pressure, the former NAL pilot said the handling of the Dana Air plane crash was the most unprofessional  that he had ever known, adding however, that if the rescue operation was handled properly, there was every tendency that lives would have been saved.

AIB, he said, had nothing to hide as far as the Dana Air plane crash was concerned, stating that some of the facts at the site of the crash were tampered with by the crowd that rushed to the site after the accident, attributing the development to ignorance.

According to him, “emergency does not kill. It is the action or inaction that kills.”
On the report released by the Group Captain John Obakpolor-led nine-man committee, the former NAL  captain said that there was  credibility issue with some of the members.

According to him, when he heard about the committee and some of the members, he advised Group Captain Obakpolor and Captain Mfon Udom to resign because they did  not have the moral justification to be in the committee but they did not listen.
He explained that Obakpolor was a contract staff with the NCAA while Udom was a management staff of the Airline Development Company (ADC), an airline that could not pay compensation when its aircraft crashed in 2006.

Meanwhile, a witness in the ongoing coroner inquest into the cause of the Dana Air crash, Mr Kayode Ajiboye, on Tuesday, while giving testimony stated that it was another aircraft belonging to Dana Airline that once had hydraulic pressure problem.
Ajiboye, who is the General Manager of Air Worthiness, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), gave this information while testifying before Magistrate Alexander Oyetade Komolafe at the resumed hearing of the inquest at the Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja.

While answering questions from lawyers at the inquest, he explained that the incident happened before the June 3, 2012 crash of Dana aircraft involving the plane with registration number 5N-RAM, explaining that it was the aircraft with registration number 5N-SRI that had hydraulic problem.
According to him, contrary to the views in some quarters, the aircraft that crashed was not the one that lost hydraulic pressure while air-borne, explaining that the aircraft with registration number 5N-SRI  was on return trip to Lagos from Uyo when it lost hydraulic pressure in the air on May 10, 2012.
It was his testimony that due to this problem, the plane had to be quickly cleared ahead of others, to make emergency landing on arrival in Lagos, adding that some of the passengers in the plane later called the Consumer Protection Department of  NCAA to complain about the state of the aircraft, including the failed air conditioner.

Ajiboye explained further that the plane was, however, taken for repairs at My-Technic Company Limited, Turkey, an aircraft maintenance and servicing company. He added that the Dana Air plane that crashed on June 3, 2012 was serviced and that a flight check was carried out on it on June 2, 2012.
It was also his testimony that the plane did not show any sign of problems during the flightcheck, adding that this was why it was scheduled for flights for the following day.

According to him, on the day of the crash, the plane still made three take-offs and two landings and that it was on the return trip to make the third landing that it crashed at Iju/Ishaga, Lagos.
Another witness, Mr Alistair Morrison, who is the Managing Director of SO Aviation Fuel Limited, a subsidiary of Sahara Group of Companies, informed the coroner that his company supplied 4,000 litres of aviation fuel to Dana Airline between 5.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. on June 2, 2012 in Abuja.
Morrison, who also confirmed that his company supplies aviation fuel to both local and international airlines, stated that, “on the average, we fuel about eight airlines per day, all receiving fuel from the same tankage. SO Aviation does about 50 fueling daily nationwide and all the airlines receive fuel from the same batch of fuel.”
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