By Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)
Updated November 26, 2012 - 12:00am
The
Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines is incorrigible, it seems.
Not even the fatal plane crash of a Cabinet secretary has shaken the air
travel regulator into cleaning and shaping up. Going by the suppressed
report of a crash investigator, the CAAP appears to have fudged the
probe to cover up festering rackets and ineptitude.
The nation so
grieved the loss of unassuming Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo last
August that state leaders hailed him as a modern-day hero. People
studied and spread stories about his quiet but efficient and honest
public service. So sad his life had to end abruptly at age 54, when the
light plane he was riding one fine dusk plunged into the sea. Throughout
the prolonged search for the ill-fated aircraft, the CAAP was expected
to thoroughly investigate the cause. Two other lives were lost, the
pilot’s and the co-pilot’s. No crash must happen again.
The
official report three months later did seem complete. The five-man
inquiry board concluded pilot error and poor aircraft maintenance as the
causes of the crash. The lone survivor, Robredo’s aide, and coastal
villagers narrated that the twin-engine Piper Seneca’s right propeller
had conked out. The pilot swung right to avoid crashing into the
dwellings below, but this caused the plane to go out of control and
nosedive. The piloting plane owner, Capt. Jessup Bahinting, supposedly
was a cool flyer, but lacked emergency knowhow. He should have turned
back for home airport at the first sign of engine trouble, but attempted
to crash land elsewhere. AviaTours Inc. that owns the aircraft
apparently had failed to keep it in tiptop shape, per regulation. Not
only was the engine faulty, but the location gear too had malfunctioned.
In short, it was all the dead Bahinting and his firm’s fault.
Comes
now CAAP special investigator Cesar Lucero with other conclusions.
Supposedly the official findings are full of holes because agency
bigwigs wanted to cover up their own faults. For one, the report did not
cite the accounts of the rescue divers. Had it done so, one glaring
fact would have surfaced, Lucero says. Bahinting’s body was found
strapped to the right cockpit seat. Meaning, he was not the pilot in
command at the time of the crash, but his Nepalese flying student, who
was on the left main seat. By implication, the CAAP air traffic control
had cleared the leased aircraft to be flown that day by a tyro, a no-no
in the rulebook. Yet there was no mention in the official report of who
was seated where.
Worse, Lucero points out, there was no review
of the aircraft history. It is routine in land, sea or air disasters to
check the background of the transport involved: maker, age, ownership
changes, maintenance and repairs. Since it was not done with AviaTours’s
Piper Seneca, the suspicion arises that its registration was renewed
without proper examination for meeting aviation standards.
AviaTours’s
other aircraft were also not mentioned. Two of its planes had crashed
recently, in Baguio City and Camiguin Island, Lucero claims. The engines
allegedly were imported as junk for a dollar each. Again the CAAP
apparently goofed.
Lucero has undergone special training in
air-crash investigation and counter-terrorism under the US-Federal
Aviation Administration. If only for this, his allegations merit review.
Lucero
is the vice president of the CAAP employees’ union that has been
feuding with management for years. His relations with the CAAP bosses
have long been strained, the reason for his supposed constant
bellyaching. Weeks after the Robredo plane crash, Lucero was suspended
for unauthorized disclosures to the press. In turn he charged them with
corruption before the Ombudsman.
The agency is one of the
dirtiest and inept. It has been criticized as the retirement home of air
force old fogies. Aviation industry leaders cry that, because of the
air force’s decrepit outdated planes, bases and equipment, the generals
are the least knowledgeable in modern avionics. The employees,
meanwhile, are under-skilled. Mere flyers of twin-engine planes are
assigned to check the proficiency of jumbo jet pilots. Yet they resist
the hiring of experienced outsiders for fear of losing their lucrative
posts. Sleazy inspectors demand thousand-dollar bribes to renew pilot
and aircraft licenses. All these have been reported to higher transport
authorities, to no avail.
Put together, these are why the
International Civil Aviation Organization, the US-FAA, and its European
Union counterpart have blacklisted the country. Due to the CAAP’s bad
regulatory record, it’s the domestic airlines that suffer, disallowed
from opening new routes to the US and Europe or adding flight
frequencies. Lucero’s revelations come in the wake of yet another ruling
by the ICAO to keep the Philippines in the blacklist.
Source: http://www.philstar.com/opinion
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