Confession Of A Nigerian Pilot -“White People Should Manage Airlines In Nigeria”

The encounter was pretty fortuitous. I had
gone to a have lunch at a restaurant
somewhere in Ikeja GRA, and was busy
doing justice to the chilled bottle of Gulder
beer, while waiting for my food to be
served, when the gentleman who was
addressed by the friend who had
accompanied him as ‘captain’ walked into
the restaurant and sat right next to me.
There was a certain air of professionalism
and savoir-faire about him and soon, the
journalist in me- ever curious kicked in. I
wanted to initiate some conversation with
him- just friendly conversation. “Are you in
the armed forces, since you were addressed
as ‘captain’? I had asked, trying to break the
ice, Displaying a willingness to also engage
me, he had answered in the negative “I am
an airline captain. I fly planes” he had
intoned, and considering the tragedy that
had occurred last week, with the crash of
The Associated Airline that was conveying
the corpse of the late Ondo state Governor-
Dr. Olusegun Agagu to Akure, I felt a strong
push to ask the captain some pertinent
questions about the state of aviation given
his experience as a captain and an aviator
of more than 30 years as he had told me.
As most of the readers of this column
would have known, I am very particular and
concerned about safety and how friendly
our skies are for air travel, having last year,
to the glory of God, narrowly missed the
Dana Air that crashed on June, 3, and my
earlier experience aboard a British Airways
flight from JFK, New York, to Heathrow
Airport, London, in 2005 that caught fire
upon take-off, but managed to make an
emergency landing that was truly
miraculous.
The captain was surprisingly candid and
answered all my questions without
hesitation. “The state of our aviation” he
had told me point-blank, “is not too
encouraging. We take a lot of things for
granted with safety. We cut corners on
things that demand strict compliance with
what obtains elsewhere. For instance, there
are some aircraft parts that may have
‘timed-out’ and need to be replaced with
newer versions. We sometimes allow those
parts to remain because they are still
functional and the newer ones are too
expensive. That should not be. The
manufacturers of those aircrafts were
conscious of the fact that at certain point,
those parts need to be changed. I have
seen maintenance being carried out on
aircrafts in the open space as opposed to
being done in hangers- that should not be.
We skirt around vital issues of safety, and
that again, should not be.”
I asked the captain if he had ever been
pressured by his employers to fly an
aircraft that he knew was not completely
airworthy, but had to be ‘managed’ to the
next destination. He looked at me for
almost a minute and in a very concerned
tone said “yes, I have” and added rather
reassuringly that “that has stopped over
the years and as we speak, I will not
jeopardize the safety of my passengers
whose lives have been entrusted under my
care.”
One area the captain harped on ceaselessly
was the emotional and psychological state
of our pilots and how that is very critical to
the safety of passengers. He went ahead to
illustrate that with a personal experience.
“When I used to fly with one of the airlines
(name withheld) and it was run by white
guys, I remember coming to work one day
and did not exhibit my normal exuberant
self. The MD had invited me to his office
and asked what the matter was, and I told
him the truth that I had a little issue with
my wife that morning at home and that I
was ok. He looked me straight in the eye
and said I should go home and resolve the
issue and return to work in three days. In
his considered opinion, I was not in the
right emotional/ psychological state of
mine to fly and the safety of the passengers
was of utmost concern to him.
How many of our operators today pay such
attention to the emotional state of our
pilots? I am aware of the fact that some
pilots in the employ of some our airlines
are owed salaries for months. How do you
expect a pilot who is struggling to pay his
bills and meet some basic financial
obligations to his family to be in the right
frame of mind to fly? Someone once told
me that airline business is not supposed to
be run by black people, since we seem not
to pay attention to critical issues in the
industry. I refuse to buy into that notion,
but I must confess certain things I have
seen in the industry almost has forced me
to think the guy may have been right. Look
at even the simple issue of parking space at
our airports. Do you know that pilots don’t
have parking slots at airports allocated to
them, as is the case elsewhere? A pilot who
is scheduled to fly say at 8 am, may have
already been stressed by the time he
mounts the cockpit, having already circled
around for minutes, looking for parking
space for his car- that is if he does not
have a driver. Such minor thing can impact
negatively on the pilot’s state of mind.”
When asked how safe it is to fly within the
Nigerian airspace, the captain was brutally
frank “It is relatively safe, I must say. But
you should fly those airlines that have been
audited by foreign technical partners. Any
airline that you see some expatriates fly
with regularly, tells you that their employers
and their embassies must have been
satisfied with the auditing that those airline
technical partners had carried out, because
those partners will not compromise safety,
neither will they cut corners unnecessarily.
“
As the captain made his exit, I did an
analysis on what he had just told me, and I
became very afraid and angry. Why should
safety in air be compromised based on the
need to make profit? Why would an
operator willingly put an aircraft up in the
sky that he knows is not airworthy?
According to sources, one of the airlines
whose operational license was suspended
almost had a mishap because an engine
packed up on a flight from Port-Harcourt to
Lagos, but thank God, the second engine
was able to power the plane to landing.
I hope and pray that the regulatory
agencies of the industry will put the safety
of passengers first over and above all other
considerations. Nigerian is adopting the
best practices in so many aspects of our
globalized space, and these are very
heartening. We must extend same to our
critical sector of aviation. Air travel is
considered the safest means of
transportation; it should not be a scary
proposition in Nigeria.
[Source: This Day Live]

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