It will cost Nigeria $5.6 million to establish a laboratory where flight recorder otherwise known as black boxes will be analysed and decoded, Commissioner of Investigations of the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) Captain Muktar Usman, has said.
Usman, who appeared yesterday before the National Assembly Joint Committee investigating the recent crashes involving Dana Airlines in Lagos and a cargo plane in Ghana, said, “We don’t have the capabilities here to download the recorders. But the government is making investment in that regards and hopefully by next year, we may be able to conclude the payments and have the laboratory established in Nigeria.”
He also stated that seven years after, the investigations into the crashes of the ADC and Bellview airlines, were still inconclusive.
He said the nature of crashes determines how long the investigations would take to be concluded, adding that only the investigation into the Sosoliso crash that occurred in 2005 had been concluded and its report released in 2006.
On whether the report of the analysis of the black box of the crashed Dana plane by a foreign laboratory would not be manipulated, he recalled that the box was accompanied by a well trained official of the bureau “who will record all the processes of the analysis, both in writing and on camera”.
In his own presentation, the Managing Director of the National Airspace Managment Agency (NAMA), Mr Nnamdi Nwafor Udo, said he would provide the committee with the transcript of recordings between the pilot of the ill-fated Dana aircraft and NAMA to clear speculations, saying “At no time did we lose communication with the pilot until he declared May Day.”
The chairman of the committee, Senator Hope Uzodinma ordered the Ministry of Aviation, the management of the National Civil Aviation Authority, the Ministry of Aviation and all the airlines operating in the country to appear before the committee today
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