CaptainTito
By Jide Ajani
He is an FAA Advance Ground Instructor with experience of
over 40years. That license qualifies him to instruct anybody to go to
the moon. He also has 35 years flying experience. He is an authority in
this business. Therefore, when Captain Tito Omaghomi spoke to Vanguard
editors on Nigeria’s aviation sector, everyone listened with rapt
attention.
“In the first place, our heart goes to everybody who has
lost a loved one.This accident was unnecessary. I had alerted Nigerians a
few weeks ago about how people have started cutting corners; how people
have become complacent”. These were the most pleasant words he uttered
throughout the session because he made some startling revelation.
Excerpts:
Dana Air appears to be involved in the distribution of relief materials?
We should appeal to Dana Air that this is not a time to give relief
materials. It is not their duty – the Federal Government and Lagos State
government are capable of doing that. They say this is the beginning of
the distribution but I want to say that they have no business doing
that.
Dana Air has come out to say the airplane lost two engines. How could that happen?
That is what they have said in their own defence but the question to ask
is who would defend the dead people? This morning, I heard a lawyer
saying the plane left Abuja with one engine and that, on the way; the
other engine failed. The Bible says my people perish for lack of
knowledge. The plane did not leave Abuja with one engine.
Is it possible for a plane to embark on a flight with one engine?
Let me explain. Procedurally, they say when a plane loses an engine, it
should turn back and land. These planes are made to fly with one engine
off. That is the truth.
So, in this instance, did the plane take off with one engine?
That airplane that crashed took off with two engines. If one fails, you
take maximum power on the second engine and you go to where you’re
going to because, at that stage, you can not just make a 180 degrees and
come and land because you are limited with your landing weight – you
have maximum take off weight, after you burn off the fuel (trip fuel),
you then have what is called maximum landing weight. But, without you
going anywhere with your fuel full and passengers full, you have maximum
take off weight which will be detrimental to the structure of the plane
if it just turns back like that to come and land. It will cause
structural damage to the landing gear.
So what is the standard procedure when an engine fails upon take off?
You dump fuel first and then come back and land. So the issue of saying
the plane took off with one engine is not true. We know that this
flight, 30miles away from Lagos, the crew contacted radar control and
requested for a radar veto – that is the radar should tell them how to
come in and land and requested for the longest runway – runway 18Right,
which is the longest runway.
If a pilot requests for the longest runway, what does that tell an observer?
If a pilot is requesting for the longest runway, he either has an engine
problem, hydraulic problem, or engine fire. We are reliably informed
that radar gave him the service that he requested for until he got on
the localizer – that is radial which directs him to the 18Right.
They were brought in and, at the last minute, they handed them over to the tower.
I’m happy Dana admitted that they did not contact the tower. After
radar had vetoed them, they all agreed that the crew never contacted the
tower and so the plane found itself on people’s houses. It was not a
choice they made. But it was as a result of uncontrollable asymmetry.
One engine had gone, they could not handle that one-engine situation and
that was why that engine veered off and landed on people’s houses.
Now, how come when it landed on the houses, it did not explode but when the fire sparked, there was no effort at disembarking?
When the plane dropped on people’s houses, the impact was so much that
there was no time to brace up for emergency and that was why they were
strapped to their seats and they all burnt to death. That is the truth.
We are still waiting for the transcript of the black box. These people
had no time to talk to the control tower. They were busy trying to
control that plane and that was how they found themselves on peoples
roof..
What is the significance of the black box because
accidents have happened before in this country and the findings were
never made public?
The black box will tell us everything that happened on that flight before the crash.
Let’s look at the way the President responded, was he right to say people will be punished?
I can understand the president’s pain at that time – that he
commiserates with families of the victims and that the government will
get to the root of the matter and those found culpable would be
punished. That is what people wanted to hear from the president but it
was a wrong signal. Air crashes are not investigated because you want to
punish somebody but they are investigated so that we can learn and
avoid future occurrences. The engineer who may have done a shoddy
inspection job would go and doctor the books and cover up his tracks;
the dispatcher who dispatched the plane would cover his track and the
same goes for the person who fueled the plane.
What is the Snr. Special Adviser to the President on Aviation doing?
The man has been there since the time of Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and
now Jonathan and he has only made three pronouncements since assuming
that office. What is he doing there?
If we want to be sincere to ourselves in this country, we should begin to look for quality.
The aviation sector is not the place where you give job to the boys – that is not only bad but also dangerous.
Look at the Aviation Minister, when she was appointed, some people
raised hell but everybody agrees that she is doing a damn good job. Look
at some of the reforms she has engendered; they are for best practices;
but this crash was just unfortunate.
What Nigerians should be looking at are the people in the boards of
the parastatals in the aviation sector. It is the board members who
formulate policies for their MDs and DGs but when you go and give jobs
to the boys, when they get to the board meeting, all they would ask for
is how much contracts are worth.
That’s a weighty allegation?
Let me tell you from experience. I was a board member of FAA along with
some politicians and we wanted to formulate a policy which I introduced.
I wanted us to build mortuaries in Lagos and Kano airports to take a
minimum of 350 people. Everybody jumped up saying ‘God forbid; it will
never happen’. But it is the truth, it will happen. Look at what
families are being put through now to recover the bodies of their
departed ones. That is part of the problems of giving the boys job in
the aviation industry.
Why do we keep having these accidents?
Accidents started happening in this country from 1969, DC 10, Nigeria
Airways. From 1969 to 2003 when Nigeria Airways was liquidated, they had
20 accidents. Of these, only three were Nigeria Airways planes. After
2003, another 21 accidents, Nigeria Airways was no longer existing but
the rate of accidents went up so you can safely say if Nigeria Airways
was operating, 75% of passengers that have died today could have flown
Nigeria Airways and the possibility of accidents on Nigeria Airways was
almost zero.
But why don’t presidential aircrafts have accidents? At least they are manned by Nigerians too?
So let’s also add that why not transfer the training of those crew to
general aviation so that we can be safe in this country? Let us ask that
too. Have you seen how they maintain those planes in the presidential
fleet? Nigerians are in charge and everybody there knows their jobs are
on the line but for general aviation, people are looking for money. Most
of them instruct their pilots not to write snags noticed in their
planes on the log book but on ordinary pieces of paper. That is why most
times the airlines fear nothing because there are no records of some
things. The Dana Air staff that spoke on conditions of anonymity said
the truth.
How would you describe the Senate’s order that Demuren, the DG, NCAA, should step aside?
They forget that the only body mandated by law to investigate accidents
in this country is AIB. Any other investigating body would make you run
foul of international law and even our own law; so we should allow AIB
to do its job.
What is the significance of the black box?
It gives detailed analysis of what happens on a plane – the speed, the
altitude, the bank angle of the plane, conversations in the cockpit and
every other thing that transpired. We should let AIB do its job before
we go into coroner’s inquest or panel of inquiry because this is mass
murder. We must stop it. You ask Demuren to step aside, but the people
appointed to investigate the crash, an example, Group Captain Obakpolor,
was employed by Demuren and he works for NCAA and you’re making him
head of the panel that would investigate the accident. He has now become
the judge, the accused and the jury. The other two captains in the
panel were executive directors of ADC airline; ADC that crashed under
the same type of conditions; compensation has not been paid, they went
underground and now you’ve gone to bring them to come and be in a panel?
What type of a country are we running? I called one of them on that
panel and told him that if I were him I will disqualify myself. I sent a
text to them to ask if they told the minister that these people
appointed into this panel are the staff of ADC and NCAA. It’s unfair. We
should be straight forward. They know after a few weeks this matter
will die down and when it happens again we will start shouting.
Could you please enlighten us about this issue of the age of an aircraft?
I have always told people that the age of an aircraft is not an issue.
DC 3 still flies. Bring a new factory mint air plane to an incompetent
pilot, he will crash the plane. Take the oldest well maintained plane
and give a competent pilot, he will fly it and fly it well. The power
plant, the engine, once that is well maintained, it minimizes risk of
accident. A 20-year-old car with a brand new engine will serve you well.
The best safety device in the aviation industry is a well maintained
aircraft and a well trained crew.
Have you had any airplane incidents?
I have had three and, if they were not well handled, I wouldn’t be alive
today: The Airbus A310, on the 14th of April, 1991, that crashed at MMA
on a Sunday morning. That day, it was raining cats and dogs. We asked
them for the condition of the runway, they said runway ‘wet’. In
aviation, that means it is not up to two milimetres of water – nobody
has any business with a runway that holds water anyway.
There is something called aqua-planing, which means that when there
is water on that runway, you will be surprised that the whole weight of
that air plane will just be suspended afloat on that water and, if the
wheels are not spinning, the breaks are useless; it is only when the
wheels are spinning that the breaks can hold. Therefore, you make a
positive landing. If not, the speed will just be suspended there until
the tyres touch ground. That was what happened to us that day, so after
the wet runway, we touched the ground and that was at the end of entire
length; I just turned the nose of the aircraft and we entered a ditch.
We evacuated 259 people safely.
That was a flight from Abuja bringing back aviation experts who were
coming from a seminar. One Mr. Anene came on board and retrieved the log
book and, within 14 hours, AeroFormation, the maintenance
investigators, landed in Lagos, took the black box and one month after
the AIB investigation and AeroFormation sent in their report with a
letter of citation for a job well done. Thank God nobody was
incapacitated. The same aqua-planning in Calabar in 1986. Our runways
hold water. You must be able to handle emergencies well.
I’ve heard people say Dana took off from Abuja with one engine; that
is not true. If you’re flying and you lose one engine, you shut down the
engine.
In a two-engine plane, on your route, when you lose engine, the
nearest airport should not be more than one hour; in a three-engine
plane, if you lose one, the nearest airport should not be more than two
hours; in a four-engine plane, it should not be more than three hours
and that is why you are not legally allowed to fly over the Atlantic
with a two-engine plane so that’s why the planes fly nearer to land than
directly over the Atlantic.
We know there is a difference between an incident and an
accident but, in Nigeria, reports of the latter are never made public,
why?
The report of my incident was made known to me – an incident does not
involve fatalities, even if the plane breaks into pieces, it is not an
accident but an accident, even if the crash involved just a death, is so
described. I saw the transcript of my own.
To be honest, government should think well and do the right thing.
At a time when there was no presidential fleet, our leaders flew in
Nigeria Airways planes. They would simply call Director of Flight
Operations that the head of state would be flying out and all the
Nigeria Airways was required to do was to withdraw a plane, reconfigure,
remove the seats, less passengers, create an office setting and that
was how they were using the Nigeria Airways planes before they had the
presidential fleet in 1986/87. They just sold the place off. The
greatest scam is coming very soon. They will soon say we must set up
another airline.
Some people say after the Cat 1 Certification, Demuren and the NCAA went to bed?
Will you say because a policeman is caught collecting bribe, MD
Abubakar, Police IG, must be sacked? He has inspectors who go to inspect
the planes from time to time and some of them (airlines) prepare, clean
up the house once they know the inspectors are coming and that is the
situation in the aviation industry. Demuren has employed all the best
hands in our aviation industry and put them in NCAA except you say he
should now go and bring expatriates.
What recommendations have you made to those in authority before now?
Let me give you a true life story. During the turbanning of Alhaji
Abubakar Alhaji, I met Abacha at Graham Douglas’ house in Ikoyi and, two
days after, we again met at the airport and he said I should join a few
other senior officers in his official plane while he went with Graham
Douglas in Julius Berger’s plane. We took off after they had left some
15, 20 minutes later.
When we got to Sokoto, our plane could not land after six attempts. A
fellow board member in the FAA, the late Prof. Don Pedro, said I should
check what the pilots were doing in the cockpit. By this time the
people on ground had become so apprehensive. I went there, knocked on
the door, entered and saw the young men. They were scared stiff, with
goose pimples. When they saw me, one of them said, ‘Skipper, the weather
is so bad, we’ve made six attempts but could not land’. I asked about
visibility, they said 300metres which meant it was so bad. But that was
not the problem, they had miscalculated the altimetre setting which made
them add 1500 feet on top of the airport elevation of 1500 which means
you are 3000 feet so you could not see the runway. I brought this to
their attention. I gave them the necessary instruction and we landed
safely.
The late General Abdulkareem Adisa was on that flight. By the time we
landed safely, the door opened and Adisa came out, he said, “Awon
AirForce, won ko mo nkan kan-o” (Air Force personnel do not know
anything). But the time we finished this rigmarole, they had finished
the turbanning. By the time we wanted to go back, none of the Army
Generals we took to Sokoto agreed to return on that plane.
We had to return with Gidado Idris, then Secretary to the Government
of the Federation, who had a plane to himself. But that was not all.
May the soul of that pilot rest in peace! The day after, it was this
same crew that took Abacha’s son to Kano. The people who could not land a
plane at Sokoto during the day now went to Kano at night and killed the
poor man.
Abacha instructed Douglas to mandate me to prepare a memo on air
accidents and that particular one, but, by the time the memo was ready,
government had instituted a probe panel to investigate and from that
time I washed my hands from government business. People are dishonest.
These crashes almost always happen at weekends, why is that so?
People are relaxed at weekends. My own experience on that Sunday,
rather than the controller to say the runway was heavy with water, he
said it was just wet.
And we should stop these criticisms of Demuren, except somebody can
come out to say he has collected bribe. The man has done so much for us
in this country. Category 1 places Nigeria at par with civil aviation in
the US, Britain and the developed world. Some countries are still
grappling with category 3 (A, B, C) but we have Category 1. Nobody has
done that before.
FAA IDENTIFICATION
Regis#: DANA992 Make/Model: MD80 Description: MD-81/82/83/87/88
Date: 06/03/2012 Time: 1530
Event Type: Accident Highest Injury: Fatal Mid Air: N Missing: N
Damage: Destroyed
LOCATION
DESCRIPTION
DANA AIR FLIGHT 992 BOEING MCDONNELL DOUGLAS MD83 AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO A
2-STORY BUILDING IN A RESIDENTIAL AREA,153 PERSONS ON BOARD WERE FATALLY
INJURED, UNKNOWN GROUND INJURIES, LAGOS, NIGERIA
INJURY DATA Total Fatal: 153
# Crew: 6 Fat: 6 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:
# Pass: 147 Fat: 147 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk:
# Grnd: Fat: 0 Ser: 0 Min: 0 Unk: U
OTHER DATA
Activity: Business Phase: Unknown Operation: Air Carrier
FAA FSDO: WASHINGTON, DC (WA45) Entry date: 06/04/2012 #