How Dana flight data recorder was lost to fire, by Accident Investigation Bureau

More facts have emerged from the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) revealing that the post accident fire, which lasted for about 20 hours, consumed the digital component of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) of the crashed Dana plane.

Also, the AIB will soon launch its $5.5 million FDR laboratory system in Abuja.  The laboratory once launched will enable the bureau to download both flight recorders promptly during accident investigation.

Meanwhile, stakeholders in the aviation sector have faulted the National Assembly’s recent report, which carpeted the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and its leadership.

The AIB Commissioner, Mukhtar Usman told reporters in Lagos at the weekend that while the solid component of the FDR was recovered, the digital part of the device was lost to the post crash fire.

“It’s like cooking an egg. The shell is intact but the egg inside is destroyed,” Usman said.

The Dana incident is similar to that of Bellview crash in Lisa, Ogun State where cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the FDR were not recovered; a situation that has delayed the release of Bellview accident report.

A FDR is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters.

Another kind of flight recorder is the CVR, which records conversation in the cockpit, radio communications between the cockpit crew and others (including conversation with air traffic control personnel), as well as ambient sounds.

Usman stated that the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent American government agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation, where the Dana FDR was taken, could not retrieve anything from the device.

For the other component, the CVR, he hinted that only few minutes’ conversation was retrieved from the CVR.

Usman disclosed that the engine of the crashed plane had also been taken to the Washington-based organization for further investigations.

Since the June 3, 2012, Dana plane crash several panels have been set up in Lagos where the accident occurred and in Abuja.

The reasons were to investigate the direct and remote causes of the crash, but Usman said that the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, recognized only AIB and no other body in such an issue.

Usman was evasive on why pass accident reports were yet to be made public, explaining that his agency was not meant to apportion blames but to find the causes of an accident and make recommendations to relevant agencies.

Usman said that his agency made 32 safety recommendations to the Federal Government with 20 of them accepted while 12 were yet to be attended to.

Stakeholders in aviation sector faulted the report which called for the sack and prosecution of the NCAA’s Director General, Dr. Harold Demuren for alleged negligence in the June 3, 2012 Dana Air crash.

The stakeholders said that the report was not only laughable but also embarrassing to the country.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Hope Uzodimma had informed the lawmakers that MD 83 aircraft belonging to Dana Air had been phased out all over the world and wondered why the regulatory body certified the ill-fated aircraft in the fleet of the airline.

But an aircraft frame engineer who worked with Boeing Aircraft Company based in Seattle, Washington, Dr. Kolawole Adegbola told The Guardian that the legislators might be getting their facts mixed up.

Adegbola, currently a consultant, structural stress analyst with GKN Aerospace (Nashville, United States, faulted the lawmakers’ claim that the production of MD-80 Family/Series (this includes MD-80/81/82/83...88) had been phased out, noting that the operation of the aircraft was  “alive and well”.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com