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Monday, February 18, 2013

FG’s report on Bellview crash doctored –Airline



Bellview Airlines on Sunday said the report of the October 2005 crash of its plane, which was released by the Federal Government through the Accident Investigation Bureau on Saturday, was doctored.
The airline also said the report contradicted the provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the United Nations agency which regulates the aviation sector globally.
The Federal Government had on Saturday released the crash reports of six airlines, including Bellview and Aviation Development Company.

The report blamed Bellview and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority for allowing a defective plane to fly and incompetent pilots to operate the ill-fated flight that led to the death of 117 people in Lisa Village, Ogun State on October 22, 2005.
However, Bellview said the report released by AIB on Saturday was different from the one it submitted about four years ago to the airline and the country of design of the aircraft.
A statement by the Head, Corporate Communications, Bellview, Mr. Terver-Uzer Luke, said the company disagreed with the content of the report.
The statement read in part, “We have just read the Accident Investigation Bureau report reference 2/2009 (BLV 2005/10/22F) uploaded on their website on February 15, 2013, and the following represent our position. We remain absolutely committed to finding the true cause of this tragic accident through open and transparent process as we have nothing to hide. We however, do not agree with the findings and conclusions of AIB.
“AIB allowed internal politics within it to distort and bias its interpretation of the material facts of the accident. AIB circulated a draft final report reference 2/2009 (BLV 2005/10/22) to the relevant authorities, including the state of design and ourselves in 2009. This report has now been doctored four years after without inviting us to comment on the fundamental alteration to the original report in accordance with ICAO Annex 13.”
Luke said the “doctored report is geared to make Bellview the scapegoat with the ulterior motive of abandoning further investigation to find the true cause of the accident.”
According to the Bellview spokesman, AIB stated in its report that the true cause of the sad accident was still unknown but went ahead to “make speculative allusions.”
The statement added, “Accident report should be factual and not speculative about the cause of the accident. The captain of the flight had 1053.54 hours experience on type in addition with over 10,000 hours and not the 153.45 hours as erroneously stated on page 8 of the AIB report.
“The captain was trained in the United States under US FAA approved training programme and facility. The captain had a valid first class medical with no restriction despite the allusion made by AIB.
“The First Officer had sufficient experience in line with regulatory requirement. We are surprised that AIB distorted these facts by intentionally understating the crew total hours on type to reach a false conclusion about the crew experience. Allusion to training records is pure speculative.”
It added, “The crew members were not over worked as abundance of evidence showed that the crew average duty time over the last six months is less than 90 hours a month and on the day of the accident, both crew have been on duty for less than four hours.”


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