New revelation has emerged about the pilot in charge of the Dana jet that crashed in Lagos in 2012, killing many people.
Site of the crashed DANA jet
Captain Peter Waxtan, the pilot-in-command of the Dana Air jet that
crashed on June 3, 2012, had previously been suspended by the United
States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for violating safety
regulations, according to a report released by the Nigerian Accident
Investigation Bureau (AIB).
According to SaharaReporters, the accident report, which was
uploaded on the AIB website and examined by our correspondent, stated
that the pilot, a 55-year-old as at the time of the crash, was suspended
in 2009 by the FAA for misdemeanors relating to a heavy landing and
fixing panels that were neither entered in the aircraft logbook nor
reported by him.
The report also revealed that Mr. Waxtan submitted unsigned
recommendation letters to Dana Air and the Nigerian Civil Aviation
Authority (NCAA) before being employed by the airline. Furthermore, his
pilot’s license was stamped by the NCAA, but not signed by any NCAA
official.
The AIB report further disclosed that Mr. Waxtan’s training captain
in flight school gave him a negative evaluation, saying that he needed
to improve his callout and operating procedures. The training captain
also commented that Mr. Waxtan needed to adhere to the Abuja Company
Procedures and Pilot Monitoring and Radiotelephone Procedures.
The training captain issued this evaluation on April 26, 2012, just six weeks before the deadly crash.
The regulatory body, however, could not confirm if Mr. Waxtan made
the required improvements before being issued a pilot’s license.
The report also maintained that the pilot’s training was rushed.
“The captain was employed on the 14th of March, 2012. He began
flying line training operations under the supervision of a training
captain on the 26th of April, 2012 after completing ground school and
simulator training. The background checks were said to have been done
with nothing found to disqualify the pilot.
“He started flying as a checked-out captain on the 2nd of May,
2012 and had accrued over 120 hours of flight time before the accident.
There was no documented evidence that the crew performed the mandatory
Crew Resource Management (CRM) training.”
The AIB investigator also discovered discrepancies in the fueling records of the aircraft.
According to the AIB, fueling records indicated that the aircraft
uplifted 8000 pounds of fuel before departing from Abuja while the
flight crew reported to the air traffic controller on duty that they had
a total of 26,000 pounds of fuel.
The AIB, in its final report, observed that “the captain was
new in the company, having been employed on the 14th of March, 2012, and
was checked out as a line captain on the 1st of May, 2012. The captain
had previous regulatory issues with the US FAA, which led to his
suspension at that time. All the reference letters presented by the
captain to Dana Airlines were neither signed nor authenticated.
“The background check on the captain was inadequate. The line
training given to the captain was hurriedly carried out. There was no
evidence that the deficiencies observed by the checkout captain were
addressed before the accident.
“The aircraft was airworthy at the time of departure. The
aircraft came out from a check and was released to service on 1st June,
2012. All deferred defects were cleared during the last check. The left
aileron bus cable was replaced on 1st June, 2012. A test flight was
carried out on 2nd June, 2012 after the replacement of left aileron bus
cable,” the report stated.
It would be recalled that the Dana Air aircraft crashed in the
Iju-Ishaga area of Lagos, roughly 5.8 miles north of Lagos Airport.
All 153 persons on board, including six crew members, perished while another six died on ground.
During the impact sequence, the airplane struck an uncompleted building, two trees and three other buildings.
The wreckage was confined to a small area, with the separated tail
section and engines located at the beginning of the debris trail.
The airplane was mostly consumed by post-crash fire. The tail
section, both engines and portions of both wings, representing only
about 15 percent of the airplane, were recovered from the accident site
for further examination.