Nigerian Aviation ( A Case Study Of The Fly DUBAI Disaster) By Daddy Freeze‏

HOW SAFE ARE NIGERIAN AIRLINES?

A Pilot that falls asleep whilst flying?OMG...This is a must read for frequent flyers! Read all of it and let us ask questions! Our lives could depend on it!

''Hi guys, I had wanted to write about the air Dubai disaster but I have been really busy. So busy that my good friend AlexAmosu is not too happy with me right now. I was supposed to submit my first article a month ago! DO and I are contributing authors in the amazing @luxafrique magazine and my much delayed first story about 'how much watch' $50,000 can get you, taken from my personal shopping experience in Dubai should finally break within a couple of days!

Anyway back to this story, I wish I had the opportunity to visit a country with a proper simulator so I can attempt a landing at Rostov with all the parameters involved in this incident. There are simulators I usually use in Miami, Paris or Amsterdam where for about 800 euros, you can use the simulator for circa 1hr. There is also a more basic one for Boeing 737 in Dubai for about $100 for 15 minutes. It's not as technically detailed as the other ones I mentioned but with 24,000 airports available, the iPILOT Dubai experience is definitely worth it. I have never been a fan of the 737. 

I see it as a very mundane plane. It doesn't have the 'fly by wire' technology of the 777 or the sheer bulk and thrust of the 747 which by the way is my favorite airplane. Anyway, since I couldn't get my hands on a proper simulator, I decided to use the one on my pc which has 500 airports but strangely enough, it somehow managed to miss out the one I needed; the ill-fated Rostov airport in Russia. 

According to preliminary reports "The the crew aborted a landing attempt to Runway 22 due to poor weather conditions. The plane was instructed to enter a holding pattern at 15,000 feet where it remained for a little under two hours. During a second landing attempt, at 3.4 miles from the runway and an altitude of 1,500 feet the crew executed a second go around and climbed to 3,975 feet, after which, the plane went out of control in a nose down attitude and hit the runway at high rate of speed and disintegrated. All 55 passengers and crew of 7 were killed." 

According to the ATC account, "Twenty-two minutes before the tragedy, the pilot reported weather conditions to flight control officers: "... visibility 5 kilometers, cloud base 630 meters, wind 230 degrees, 13 m/s with gusts of 18 m/s, light pouring rain, mist, strong turbulence, moderate wind shear. " luckily my sim could be programmed to simulate all of these so I went ahead and set up the parameters. Because I didn't have the Rostov airport, I decided to use one in Honolulu and since I wasn't a fan of the 737 I never bought one so I used a 747.

My findings:

I turned off my autopilot and flew 'manually' like the pilots reportedly did and I flew in a holding pattern for 2 hours at 15,000 feet like the pilots were instructed to, then proceeded to attempt my first approach. The winds were crazy and I had to abort, but as you can see I was able to land on my second attempt. It was a struggle if you listen carefully you will hear the engines howl as I battled the winds right to the ground. Since the approaches were manual I didn't use my ILS glideslope.

So what then, what could have caused the crash? I ruled out 2 things:

1. A phenomenon called a 'microburst'

2. Pilot error.

1: A microburst is a downward draft of air that could cause sudden tail winds and dangerously reduce a plane's lift. Microbursts are difficult to recover from and can be fatal, thus they are best avoided altogether. 

The nose dive attitude of the airliner could be caused by losing lift as a result of a microburst, or trying to recover from a stall resulting from the microburst etc. often when a plane loses lift at a low altitude the crew could lose control.

U.S. airports carry equipment to identify wind shears and microbursts. The controller might tell a pilot this:

"RUNWAY 27 ARRIVAL, MICROBURST ALERT, 35 KT LOSS 2 MILE FINAL, THRESHOLD WIND 250 AT 20."

DO NIGERIAN AIRPORTS CARRY THESE??

2: PILOT ERROR: The Australian broadcasting commission on its website (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-08/flydubai-crash-investigation-points-to-pilot-error/7312756) carried the following headline: 

"FlyDubai plane crash: Russian investigation suggests pilot error"

Also, according to a report from the BBC on their website, 

FlyDubai crash pilot 'was due to leave job over fatigue'

The report goes on to say;

"The captain of the FlyDubai jet which crashed in Russia last Saturday was due to leave the airline, citing fatigue, colleagues say.The Boeing 737-800 crash in Rostov-on-Don killed all 62 people on board, including seven crew. Pilots speaking anonymously to the BBC say fatigue was a contributory factor in the accident One pilot reported previously falling asleep at the controls from exhaustion."

WOW now this is scary!!!! IS THIS HAPPENING IN NIGERIA? With the way the airlines shuttle back and forth are our pilots fatigued? With the delays and cancellations, is undue stress being put on our pilots? As a result of the lingering fuel scarcity and the economic downturn are airlines in Nigeria overworking their pilots? A friend of mine who works with a popular Nigerian airline said he was being owed a months salary! Is this right?

My dear people, PILOT FATIGUE IS SERIOUS! It has been estimated that between 15-20% of fatal air crashes are caused by pilot fatigue, so let's not handle this issue with kids gloves.

You really don't want to be in an air crash in Nigeria. Previous crashes have shown that rescue operations in Nigeria are poor and the rate of fatality is extremely high. So let's avoid crashes altogether!

Questions arising:

How come I can go to the Internet and get detailed information on the fly Dubai crash that happened less than a month ago, including flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder information, enough information for me to recreate the scenario of the crash in a simulator, whereas the Dana crash that happened in 2012 still has minimal information? 

According to Wikipedia 

"The accident occurred after the crew reported engine trouble and declared an emergency 11 nautical miles (20 km) from the airport. The MD-83 then crashed into a crowded neighbourhood near the airport, apparently landing on its tail and causing a large fire. The crash scene reportedly became chaotic, with The Sun reporting that thousands of Lagos residents attempted to approach the site. Crowds attempted to bring hoses to the site while soldiers attempted to disperse onlookers with punches and rubber whips. The onlookers then threw stones at the soldiers in retaliation. Water for firefighting was scarce for several hours due to the city's shortage of fire trucks, and civilians attempted to fight the fire by hand with water from plastic buckets. Water trucks commandeered from nearby construction projects had difficulties reaching the site due to the neighbourhood's narrow roads."

Reading this Wikipedia report I am embarrassed for Nigeria. Which other country left a disaster and started using soldiers to whip the crowd while the crowd was throwing stones at the soldiers? Which civilized country uses plastic buckets to extinguish an aircraft fire? 

If not for the fact that superman died in Batman vs Superman, I would have recommended that Nigeria signed him on for disaster management.