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Benchmarking Our Aviation Sector By Zayyad I. Muhammad Jimeta, Nigeria The Nigerian aviation industry is a typical prove of Law Of Reverse Order, when serious nations are vigorously building high-tech Airport, we are crawling to patch up our run ways, when other country’s air space are in the pink we don’t have radars to know what is happening on our skies, when new silence- proved planes are flying in other countries we are increasingly becoming a dumping ground for old, noisy and out dated planes, when other governments are committed to improving their aviation sector we are immersed in the usual Nigerian way of solving problem, throwing away the problem to others, the usual government officials phrase ‘ this is due to the neglect of the previous government’ . A record three plane disaster and nearly three hundred lives lost in less three months is an embarrassment on our faces, while smaller nations are managing their aviation industry efficiently, with our expertise, resources and market we have failed terribly, ours is in a perpetual state breakdown. Time has come for us to copy from others and introduce new initiative to the industry, rather than waiting for others to inform us our shortcoming in the industry or until some foreign airlines companies threaten to stay away from our airports. It is the understanding of all of us that commercial airlines in Nigeria are far behind others in many countries in terms of quality aircraft and the most pressing issue in the industry is the incapacity of the players to acquire new fleets of aircrafts and maintaining them in the low patronage aviation market such as ours. The recent sosoliso air crash in Port Harcourt have made authorities in Nigeria to sit-up and face the challenge in the aviation in industry and here many lessons are to be learned both positive and negative because it seems that there is total slackness in the entire system from the first man on the queue to the last; the regulating authorities, the airline proprietors, the crews and the passengers. Worldwide accidents do normally happen in the aviation industry but there is growing unhappiness among Nigerians that the recent air mishaps in Nigeria are primarily due to negligence from the part of authorities and airline companies. Nigeria must commit to remaining aerospace nation and to reinvigorating the aviation in industry, and this must be escalated from all angles by rebuilding the industry using a system approach. When research in United States America show that investment in aeronautical research continues to decline by 50 percent since 1987, the number of American students studying air and space subjects in colleges and universities has decreased nearly 60 percent Since 1990, frivolous lawsuit in the system, investment continues to decline by 50 percent since 1987. Of the top four manufacturers of airliners, only one, Boeing, is American; the other three are Airbus (European), Embraer (Brazilian), and Bombardier (Canadian). American dominance in commercial helicopters, once taken for granted, has also evaporated in the face of innovative design and marketing by foreign partnerships, the US government enacted the General Aviation Recovery Act (GARA). Nigeria can copy from such bold step by covering the entire facet of the industry in streamlining. The greatest challenges facing the aviation industry in Nigeria are infrastructures, poor market and absoluteness especially in the area of navigational aid, authorities should as reason of necessity ensure the coverage of the nation’s entire air space, the lingering Radar contract must be completed and those saddle in the responsibility should keep in mind that world wide all ground –based navigational aid are rapidly being displaced by satellite-based aids like GPS, which make it possible for aircrews to knows their position with great precision anywhere in the world and with the arrival of WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) the GPS has become more accurate for both vertical and horizontal use. The task of reinvigorating a safe and sound aviation industry in Nigeria goes beyond the government or regulating agencies, the airlines companies, the crew and the passengers are equally on the same queue, the crew are instrumental in making sure that safety is respected, as they are in the best position to know the physical condition of the aircrafts and to deciding whether to fly or not to fly, with high esteem in the eye of their passengers, crew are always in the confidence of the passengers but crews do some times neglect the lives of the passengers; in 1972 Eastern Airline Flight401 crashed mainly due to failure of the pilot to properly monitor the flight instrument, likewise in 1972 Prinair Flight 191 crashed due to pilot landing error and in 1958 the Munich air disaster was due to pilot take-off error. Though this writer is not aware of any indictment of pilots or any crew member in Nigeria due to negligence on their part but time has come for greater attention to be placed on airline crews, in 1990 Northwest Airlines crew members were sentenced to jail time for flying from Fargo, North Dakota to Minneapolis–St Paul international airport while drunk, in 2001, the same Northwest fired a pilot in July 2002, who failed a breathalyser test after flying from San Antonio, Texas to St-Paul Airport. Do we really know what pilots have done before flying us? How careful are the other members of the crew? In 1974 the failure to correctly close a cargo door on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 resulted in the loss of the aircraft, human factors incident are not limited to errors by the pilots or other crew members, the person in the tower is very important. Time has come for Nigeria to reinvigorate the aviation industry by copying from others using a system approach that cover the entire facet of the sector or else the world will desert our air space.
Zayyad I. Muhammad writes from Jimeta, Nigeria |