Ensuring Aircraft Safety in Nigeria

Chinedu Eze

The most critical in airline operations is about keeping the aircraft airworthy, to enable it airlift passengers from one airport to another safely.

However, human error and faulty equipment are two key factors that have defied air safety rules, leading to many air crashes that happened in Nigeria.

When Associated Aviation Flight 361 crashed on take-off at the domestic runway of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos on October 3, 2013, the then Director General of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Captain Fola Akinkuotu, said while it was the duty of the regulatory authority to effectively oversight the airlines, it remained the duty of airlines to ensure that their equipment is safe, and insisted that airlines should seriously engage in self-regulation while they were over-sighted by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

Since then, many of the airlines upped their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and strictly followed the rules in terms of aircraft maintenance, personnel training and overall standard of operations.

The issue of aircraft maintenance was brought to the front burner recently, during the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Aviation Conference (FNAC 2025), which was held in Lagos, where the Chairman and CEO of Nigeria’s leading carrier, Air Peace, Dr. Allen Onyema, gave details of how the airline ensured aircraft safety and invariably safe flight operations.

Onyema said the first step in ensuring air safety was choosing the right maintenance teams and making sure the standard was not compromised.

“I brought in a British company to be in charge of our airline maintenance and again I engaged the world’s most expensive, quote me, the world’s most expensive MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul), for airline maintenance provider, base maintenance provider, which is the Israeli Aerospace Industries. They are here in Nigeria 24/7, maintaining Air Peace aircraft. They are the world’s most expensive, but at the same time the best. So, I went for them, because I have phobia for flying. When we talk about safety, all Nigerian airlines are actually safe because of the kind of oversight the NCAA conducts on us,” Onyema said.

He gave credit to NCAA for its effective oversight of the airlines, saying that it is tough but very good.

“The kind of oversight NCAA brings to bear on Nigerian airlines, nowhere in the world is that done. Sometimes we cry that they are overdoing it. But then you have seen the results. In the last 12 years or so, Nigerian airlines are no more falling out of the skies, so kudos to everybody involved. But coming to individual airlines, I am not speaking for Air Peace alone; I am speaking for Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) of which I am the Vice President. We tell ourselves gentlemen the easiest way to get out of business is for you to cut corners when it concerns safety. Please when you get to the airport fly any Nigerian airline be confident even the smallest of Nigerian airlines. When it comes to safety, nobody jokes about it,” Onyema further said.

According to him, the most important thing airlines do is self-regulation. They do not wait for NCAA to inspect them before they do the right thing. He recalled how he decided to ground Embraer E145 aircraft in his fleet because an error was discovered in one of the six aircraft.

“You don’t wait for the regulator to always breathe hard on you. You do it yourself. So, we withdrew the aircraft fleet form service. When we grounded the fleet, we took them abroad, spending several millions of dollars.  They opened the aircraft and did not see anything but I was satisfied. I satisfied myself and for the sake of the flying public also. Because one incident can take you out. It is not about business alone, it is about lives.

“So, we thank the NCAA for the kind of oversight they have brought to bear on Nigerian airlines. And at the same time, I thank my brother airlines because all of us are really after safety. Appreciate your own, what we are doing here others don’t do it. Let me tell you what happened in Gatwick. The report came out from Gatwick that Air Peace came first on the stabilized approach. The report they released after one year, Air Peace beat every other airline going into that Gatwick. The report is there. This is about safety and they said, look your pilots will come and teach others what they were doing how they were able to achieve that,” he added.

On drug taking by airline crew, which came up following the incident when Air Peace aircraft overshot the runway at Port Harcourt Airport, Onyema said airlines carried out regular drug checks on their flight crew.

“You saw the news about the incident in Port Harcourt, how the aircraft skidded off the runway. Yes, because the captain did not do what he was supposed to do. But that was what happened, not because of any drug, because the drug issue was later cleared by the NCAA who did the confirmatory test in the right laboratory. So, it was the pilot’s error to have landed where he was not supposed to land, even neglecting the co-pilot’s advice. And that was failure of crew resource management (CRM) and we have reinforced it going forward. Of course, you step down such pilot. So, I believe in the Nigerian airline industry. They are doing well, working assiduously to make sure it does not happen again,” Onyema said.

The Air Peace chairman also spoke about manpower development in the aviation industry, said that one of the things that was making it very difficult to have manpower in the aviation industry at the level was because of lack of loyalty.

He explained that when an airline trains a pilot, he may sign a bond that the pilot will serve the airline for some number of years, but after training the pilot he will repudiate the agreement and leave the airline to another, once something is added to his emolument.

According to Onyema, this is the reason why airlines are no more training pilots and engineers because they do not keep to the agreement when bonded.

“I am sure Air Peace has trained over 100 pilots. The next day when they want to leave, they get down from the aircraft and go to the next airline. And with the advent of state airlines all over the place, some of these state airlines are encouraging bad behaviour, and that is the truth. A situation where a pilot is under bond, to train one pilot will cost you over N50 million and you bond the person. The bond is still on and the next day he might not even give you notice, he just calls on you, oh I am not flying tomorrow and I am out,” he said.

Citing international best practices, Onyema said: “When a pilot is coming to work for you from another airline, the new airline will demand a letter of discharge and also evaluation to see whether the pilot is the kind the airline would want to work with, but in Nigeria, this is not observed.”

He gave example with Qatar Airways which demanded discharge letter from Air Peace for a former pilot employee.

“That is how it is supposed to be. But some of these airlines that are just coming up are encouraging extreme bad behaviour in industry. And all of us are saying no more. In Air Peace, I am not ready to type-rate anybody. If your parents don’t have the money, you have to go and borrow it so that the day you leave I know that you came to us with your qualifications.

“So, if you are living abruptly at least that will give us comfort. And I am speaking the minds of all the airlines because we had a meeting recently in AON to address this. And we wrote to NCAA what is happening. I mean it is atrocious. So, these are the issues that we need to address holistically as an industry. To be honest, most of us prefer to go and bring the foreigners. You trust them more. When they sign the contract, they live up to their contract,” Onyema added.