Chinelo Obogo
The Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has indicted Medview Airline for failing to report the serious incident involving one of its aircraft which occured on July 23, 2019.
In the preliminary report released on Sunday by the agency into the serious incident involving Medview Airline at the Abuja airport, the AIB said it only became aware of the occurrence from news media as the incident was not reported to it by the airline as required by regulation of the Civil Aviation (Investigation of Accidents and Incidents) Regulations 2019. In the AIB’s report, the initial findings also indicated that the crew experienced loss of pressurisation on descent and requested for priority landing without initially disclosing the nature of the emergency and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) recordings of the occurrence were overwritten. The aircraft heading to Lagos from Abuja had 28 passengers on board and six crew. There were no fatalities or injuries to those on board the aircraft.
“From the post occurrence interview records available to the Bureau, the Captain stated as follows: “While briefing the passengers through the Public Address (PA) System, I heard the cabin altitude warning horn, I immediately stopped the briefing, donned my oxygen mask and asked the co-pilot to set pressurisation mode selector to ‘MAN’ and close the valve; I immediately initiated an emergency descent. As I checked the cabin altitude indicator, I noticed that the cabin altitude was still climbing and then called for Emergency Descent Checklist. While in the descent (the checklist items were being executed), the Passenger Oxygen masks deployed automatically before the switch was activated by the F/O as instructed in the Emergency Descent checklist”. At 14:45:27 hours, the aircraft had contact with the Lagos Approach Radar (APP).