AS it marks the first anniversary of its plane crash at Lisa, Ogun State today, Bellview Airlines may be on a collision course with families of some of the passengers that lost their lives in the ill-fated flight.
Solicitor to the families of the deceased, Sola Akinyede in a petition dated October 18, 2006 to the Chairmen, Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Aviation, yesterday accused the airline of frustrating efforts to furnish them with copies of the death certificates of the deceased persons.
The certificates, he said, would enable “us apply for Letters of Administration, which were necessary not only to collect compensation from Bellview Airlines, but more importantly to enable them have access to the administration of the affairs of their departed loved ones as well as access to the administration of the affairs of their departed loved ones’ assets, bank accounts.”
But the spokesman for the airline, Mr. Habib Mohammed, said that members of the families that had earlier come for the certificates had denied the aggrieved knowledge of the documents.
He said the airline decided not to inform them because it was a private matter, which they could not disclose to any other person.
Mohammed said until they satisfied all necessary documents devoid of controversy, the airline would continue to exercise restraints to avoid paying compensations to the wrong hands.
Akinyede confirmed this position in a letter to the Managing-Director of Bellview, Mr. Kayode Odukoya on August 4, 2006. He noted that the airline’s legal adviser had said the document were not available to them to avoid multiple claims.
Akinyede, who is also the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Board of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Imo State, represents four of the crash victims, namely Dagaci Sirajo, Abdulkareem Rabiu Bebeji, Akpama Etime Raymond and Amina Bello Mohammed-Oumar.
In the petition, he frowned at what he described as the delay tactics by the airline not to make the certificates available.
The availability of the death certificates, he said, would ease the difficulties visited on the relations of the deceased.
He said: “Bearing in mind the fact that there is a two-year period of limitation during which the families must either accept whatever Bellview is offering or go to court; it is obvious that Bellview’s tactics are designed to frustrate our clients to force them to accept whatever the airline says.”
In the letter to Odukoya, Akinyede described as “superfluous and illogical” the suggestion of Bellview legal adviser that they should again obtain letter of authority from their client.
Nonetheless, the airline’s spokesman assured that the matter would be resolved very soon, adding that there were no problems concerning all claims.
He hoped that the read-out from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) would be made available to everybody, noting that media reports on information from the airline seems to suggest that the black boxes were never located.
He said: “Having regard to the fact that the FDR, which is located in the tail of the aircraft is designed to be impact resistant to 3400Gs and fire resistant to 1100 degrees centigrade and is designed to withstand even mid air collisions, the story that the FDR cannot be found is suspect and very questionable.”
Last week, the Director of Accident Investigation Prevention Bureau (AIPB), Mr. Angus Ozoka, listed the difficulties in investigating the crash and thus delay in releasing the report.
Ozoka disclosed that inability to recover the cockpit voice recorder, the fact that there were no survivors, no credible eyewitness, coupled with the bad radar at the Lagos Airport at that period made the investigation difficult.
However, he admitted that “we don’t have to have the black boxes to conduct investigation, but the recovery would have aided our job.”
He reminded that the initial fear was that a bomb caused the accident, but that after some investigation, “bombing was ruled out.”