AIR traffic engineers yesterday gave an account of their last contact with Beechcraft 1900D aircraft, believed to have crashed in the Obudu area of Cross River State.
At the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, President of the National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE), Mr. Ifeanyi Nwankwo, said that it was untrue that the missing aircraft made its last contact with the control tower of the Port Harcourt airport in Rivers State.
According to him, the air traffic personnel at the Enugu airport control tower successfully handed over the plane to the Obudu airstrip.
The aircraft belonging to Wings Aviation Limited was declared missing nine days ago and it is yet to be found.
Aviation parastatals’ chiefs and the Minister of State for Transportation, Felix Hyat, had earlier told the nation that the aircraft had been found.
They later recanted, saying they were misinformed.
But Nwankwo insisted that the missing aircraft was duly handed over to the Obudu airstrip before it was reported missing from the airspace.
His disclosure contradicts a statement earlier issued by the airline that the ill-fated aircraft lost contact with the Port Harcourt airport’s control tower, 10 minutes after its last contact.
The NAAE boss explained that Enugu was the last airport that had contact with the missing aircraft.
Nwankwo said: “As at that time, the aircraft was maintaining 250 left while Enugu area control gave the pilot clearance to descend after which he got contact with the radio operator in Obudu.”
He added that the pilot of the missing plane reported a two-way contact with Obudu airstrip, which belong to the Cross River State Government and thus ended the National Airspace Management Agency’s (NAMA’s) business with the aircraft.
“That airstrip is not an airport, it is not charted, so it is like whoever is flying to that airstrip has his own responsibility for whatever happens. At the point he reported two-way contact with Obudu, NAMA’s business was finished and NAMA had no responsibility any longer,” Nwankwo declared.
He said the aircraft used NAMA radar up to 50 nautical miles when it left Lagos and later used the SATCOM communication system to hand it over to Port Harcourt airport before it was taken over by Enugu airport.
Nwankwo explained that it was the business of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to certify airports, aerodromes or airstrips before NAMA could move in to such places.
He said that the jungle nature and landscape of Obudu coupled with the poor equipment of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) might have been responsible for the non-discovery of the light aircraft.
Nwankwo stated that the plane could easily be found if it had an alerting equipment.
He, therefore, advised the Federal Government not to jump into sacking aviation chiefs but to first find out which agency failed to do its job.
According to him: “NAMA provided air navigation for that small aircraft belonging to Wings Aviation and as at the time it was missing, NAMA went further to alert the relevant authority.”
Nwankwo said that unless the government stopped playing politics with sensitive and complex sectors like aviation, the problems would continue.
The NAAE president advised that non-professionals should not be allowed into the aviation sector to avoid national embarrassment, such as the current saga.
“It boils down to policy issues because we have a lot of charlatans in the aviation sector. People, because of their political affiliation and connection, get into it and forget that aviation is purely a professional area,” he said.