By Chinelo Obogo
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) are working more closely to promote air safety and reduce incidents, accidents, it has been revealed.
At a conference with the theme: “Prevention of Human Factors in Air Accident Occurrence”, organised by the AIB-N in collaboration with the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondent, LAAC in Lagos, the Director General of the NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu, said the regulatory agency and the AIB are working together to promote air safety, adding that there was a committee in place that is alive to this responsibility.
He lamented that every accident is a tragedy, adding that the global accident rates according to records have continued to increase from 2015 to 2019.
Nuhu also insisted that it behoves on investigation authorities to unravel the probable causes and contributory factors of these accidents, make recommendations to prevent a recurrence.
He said that, as the regulator, they sit down with AIB and review the recommendations to make sure that these are recommendations they can implement without violating other regulations or require the changing of some of its regulations to resolve this problem.
The NCAA boss stressed that more than 70 per cent of aircraft accidents and incidents were traceable to human factors causes while others are weather, equipment, maintenance, airport/ATC and others.
He defined human factor as “Matching the man (person) to the job and matching the job to the man under the prescribed conditions”. This implies compatibility of the person to the job i.e. preparing, adapting, enabling, equipping and conforming the person to perform the assigned task to achieve the design and expected objectives. Any mismatch will contribute to human error and is a precursor to an accident.
“Develop appropriate Safety Recommendations that are based on safety risk assessments and cost-benefit analysis; and Prevent reoccurrence and improve safety records. All we have done is to make the committee more active, more alive to its responsibilities and as a regulatory agency we must work together with them.
“Apart from being a regulatory requirement, we cannot enhance the safety of the industry without working together.”