THE Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) has disclosed that the flight crew of the private jet that landed on a road in the Ogwashi-Uku area of Delta State on July 10, this year, overwrote the aircraft’s black box.
The black boxes, comprising the Cockpit Voice Recorder, CVR, and Flight Data Recorder, FDR, capture cockpit audio, aircraft systems and flight performance data to help investigators determine the causes of incidents or accidents and improve aviation safety.
The incident, involving a Bombardier Challenger 601 operated by VMO Aero, occurred after the plane missed the runway at Asaba Airport and landed on a parallel concrete road in nearby Ogwashi-Uku, a development that immediately attracted public scrutiny.
Addressing journalists virtually on Friday, August 14, Director General of the NSIB, Alex Badeh Jnr, said between the time the incident occurred and when the aircraft departed for Lagos, the crew overwrote the recorded data, making the investigation more challenging.
He, however, said investigators relied on other available evidence to reconstruct the sequence of events and determine what happened.
According to him: “I don’t think airlines are doing anything (to hamper investigation into accidents or incidents) deliberately, at least not to my knowledge.
“But one thing is: The FDR and CVR being overwritten a lot of time. That is an issue that we face. I think that is something we faced with the last one in Asaba.
“They took off and flew back to Lagos and overwrote everything that happened when they landed in Asaba. That aeroplane, being a November registered and operating on a parts 91 certificate, which is a not for profit, just for private operation, not for charter hire, they weren’t subject to the rule that requires them to have the 26 hours cockpit voice recorder…
“Between when the incident happened and when they took off and went back to Lagos, they overwrote everything that happened. That made things a little difficult, but we still worked with other things to figure out what happened. We are still working with other parts to get the data for that.
“The FDR of that aeroplane did not work as well. I am not sure what happened.”
He stressed that the pilot subsequently flew the aircraft back to Lagos without Air Traffic Control (ATC) clearance, and because aircraft Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) rely on continuous loop memory, where newer telemetry automatically overwrites older recordings once storage capacity is reached, the unauthorised flight back to Lagos effectively wiped the performance data recorded during the botched landing.
“It was discovered that the pilot who flew that aircraft overwrote the black boxes by the time he flew to Lagos. Everything that happened was overwritten. We are still investigating, but some of the data was destroyed.
“The crew don’t trust NSIB; they are scared of losing their jobs. It is a major problem we are dealing with,” he stated.
Recall that the private aircraft, with four crew members on board, landed on the road, an action the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, described as a security breach, saying the crew were in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS).
