Chairman of the Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria (FEHN) and a cadet pilot, Mr Allen Onyema, speaks on how to make Nigeria’s airspace safe among other issues.
What is your take on controversies trailing the proposed national carrier giving the Nigeria Airways experience?
What I think the government should bother itself with is providing the necessary infrastructure for the private sector to thrive in aviation. I do not support government running an airline. Airline has several avenues for leakages. Even private owners find it extremely difficult controlling corrupt practices within their system.
Government cannot and will never be able to run this business. The government has a sincere disposition towards setting up a national carrier but the truth is that corruption, in the coming years, will destroy the airline. If the privately owned airlines cannot effectively curb leakages in their system, government would be worse off.
*Mr Allen Onyema
Our airspace is becoming unsafe once again, as somebody interested in Aviation, what do you make of that?You may be right and wrong that our airspace is becoming unsafe because of the not-too-good stories of the past. About a year ago, Dana Airline crashed, we had the helicopter crash in Bayelsa and now you have the Associated Airlines plane crashing, these may prompt anyone to say that the skies are not safe. However, it may not be totally correct to say that our space is unsafe.
It’s unfortunate and regrettable that these things happened. Some of these things could be avoided but that is not to say that they do not happen in other places. It’s just that when it happens in other places, the way they react and the things they put in place to forestall recurrence is not the way it happens over here. As far as I can say for now, the Nigerian skies are very safe despite the Dana and Associated plane crashes.
We also had the IRS that was guarded to land in Kaduna and a Cargo airline that made air return…
This country needs the media to understand aviation very well, that is, the dynamics of aviation and the dynamics of flying. If we all understand it, we would be spared a lot of the stories going round. Every country has air returns on daily basis. Air return is a precautionary measure, it’s not that there is going to be a disaster.
It is like when you are driving your car and one of your dashboard lights shows, you should stop and look at the car, to know what it is. It may be ordinary fuse which may not actually endanger the car. It could be something serious. So, when a pilot notices an adverse signal in the air after take-off, the only way he could stop is to turn back or land at an alternate airport.
The attitude of Nigerians and the press might endanger flight safety in this country. The way the media report aviation issues might endanger flight safety. When a pilot decides to take precautionary measures of going back to base, what you see in the newspapers the next morning is ‘ABC plane almost crashed! Danger averted! 98 people escape death!’
No, you don’t say it this way. In the developed nations with world class facilities, they do air returns regularly, you can have more than 20 air returns in a day. But in Nigeria, once it happens, the Minister must resign is what you hear. Time may come when these airlines, in order to keep afloat, will beg their pilots to see how they could manage it to the end and not have an air return. And it could spell disaster. Read more..
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