WORRIED by the seeming embarrassment caused the nation by inability of the relevant agencies to locate the missing light aircraft one week after, the Presidency at the weekend summoned chief executives of parastatals under the Ministry of Air Transportation for a debriefing on the development.
The aircraft, a turbo-propelled Beechcraft 1900D, registered 5N-JAH, belonging to a local airliner, Wings Aviation Limited, reportedly took off the upper Saturday from the local wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos to Bebi Airstrip, near Obudu Tourist Resort, Cross River State. The plane had been missing since then with its three crew members.
The 19-seater aircraft, registered with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) by its owners, Wings Aviation Limited, as a charter aircraft, was said to have left for the Obudu ranch to ferry top state government officials.
But a Presidency source told The Guardian yesterday that following conflicting reports on the fate of the aircraft, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had told his aides that an answer to the whereabouts of the plane must be found this week.
It was learnt that on the strength of Yar’Adua’s disapproval of the conflicting reports from the Ministry and other relevant agencies on the missing plane, an ad-hoc panel was set up to look into the matter.
Prior to the summon, the Minster of State (Air Transport), Mr. Felix Hyat, was said to have had three meetings with different stakeholders in the industry, during which he tasked them to prepare for whatever reaction that might come from the Presidency on the matter.
As at Friday and greater part of yesterday, the chief executive of NCAA, Dr. Harold Demuren and his Nigerian Airspace Management Authority (NAMA) counterpart, Captain Ado Sanusi had represented their organisations at Aso Rock. The Federal Airports Authority (FAAN), Accident Investigation and Management (AIM) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) were yet to appear before the meeting.
Said a Presidency source: “If the right thing was done, the nation would have been saved this shame because it was just in January that one of the parastatals submitted official position on the Obudu Ranch, as part of the report on the Airforce jet with many senior military officers, which crashed en-route the ranch last year. As a result of that crash, all flights to the airfield were cancelled until the right things were done.”
Part of the report under reference stated that the airstrip had not been charted, as an airport within the Nigerian airspace management.
It was also gathered that because the airstrip lacks radar coverage, flight to and from it is based on the discretion of a pilot. “The danger here is that if at any point in time the acuity of such a pilot is shaken by any factor, it could lead to unavoidable error.”
The source doubted that the ill-fated aircraft got the necessary clearance from the relevant agencies to make the trip.
Indeed, retired Captain Dele Ore said that the authorities should prove to the public that there was a proper documentation of the plane’s flight schedule on the day and time of its took off.
“If care is not taken, more of such tragedy could repeat itself, because there is no radar service at Obudu Airfield and yet it is a vital tourist centre, which is bound to attract many visitors, local and foreign.
“If something is not done, it would only take a pilot, who has had a good exposure of that terrain to navigate a hilly spots within the airstrip,” he said.
The Presidency is said to be uncomfortable with the speculation that the aircraft might have crashed outside the Nigerian air space, following the report that contact was already being made with the Camerounian aviation authorities to assist in locating the plane.
Confirming the poor state of the airstrip, an aviation consultant, Group Captain John Obakpolor said: “If equipment such as Doppler radar was on ground, we would have prevented the current disaster in the industry. And until the right thing is done, nothing showed that this will be the last of such tragedy.”
The chartered plane, boarded by three crewmembers, was declared missing by the control towers at both Calabar and Enugu airports.
A rescue team, made up of officials of NEMA and NAMA, said it was yet to locate the crash site. But the Ministry of Transportation (Aviation) raised the hope two days after that the spot of the crashed plane had been discovered. However, it took a counter-statement by other government agencies, insisting that the plane was still missing.
Nonetheless, officials of the Aviation Roundtable have alleged that there were some yet to be explored areas before a final statement on the fate of the plane could be made.