‘Wind Shear, Cause Of ADC, Sosoliso, Bellview Crashes’

The Commissioner of
Accident Investigation Bureau and Prevention (AIBP), Captain  Usman Muktar, has disclosed that Wind Shear was responsible for the Sosoliso, ADC, Bellview and other accident that happened in 2005 and 2006 aside human error.
Wind shear is a different wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere which could spin an aircraft out of control.
Experts say it is dangerous for flights because it is highly turbulent and according to them, the  only way to prevent  wind shear  is to avoid it.
The AIBP commissioner  disclosed that during the investigations on the causes of the accidents, it was found that weather played key role in downing the aircraft which  together killed over 400 people, while further investigation however narrowed the cause of accidents down to wind shear.
“I will like us to cast our minds to 2005, when we had the Bellview  accident  in October 22,2005. In November,  the same year  we had a small aircraft  that went down in  Kaduna and killed two people. On December 10, the same year, Sosoliso went down in Port Harcourt and in 2006, October 29, the  ADC went down”, Muktar said.
The commissioner said all these accidents have some form of weather-related factors and we narrowed the weather-related to wind shear activities.
He explained that the stop wind shear related accidents, AIBP made recommendations in the accident reports  and directed that there should be regulatory changes, training changes, including airborne equipment (aircraft).
“We recommended that all pilots should be retrained  both at initial level and the level of currency because pilots are expected to do recurrency training recognition and recovery from wind shear phenomenon”, he stated.
According to him, that was taken into Nigerian regulation and it is being monitored to meet requirement that certain  categories   of aircraft most have onboard a wind shear alerting system, which is predictive, that is, it should be able to see ahead  and tell the pilot to avoid it because  the best solution is avoidance.
He said the meteorlogical agency installed at the aircrafts low level Wind Shear  alerting system, which were first installed at the four major  airports and later at others.
“I am happy to say that since 2005 and 2006, after those crashes  we have not had any other weather  related accident in Nigeria” Muktar said.

Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State (left), and former Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, at the foundation laying for a Perishable Cargo Terminal in Asaba last Tuesday. Photo: NAN