The federal
government has approved the upgrade of the Material Science and Flight Safety
Laboratories which will help the Accident Investigation Bureau, AIB, to
speedily investigate plane crashes.
Akin
Olateru, the Commissioner of AIB, confirmed the development to journalists on
Sunday on the sideline of the ongoing training on accident investigation report
writing organised by the bureau in Lagos.
The News
Agency of Nigeria reports that the AIB has two laboratories, flight safety and
the material science.
The flight
safety laboratory is where the Flight Data Recording, FDR, and the Cockpit
Voice Recorder, CVR, otherwise known as the black boxes of aircraft are
downloaded.
Mr. Olateru,
who did not disclose the cost of the project, noted that it could be on the
high side due to the fact that both facilities would be upgraded with modern
technology.
He said that
contract for the laboratories started in 2008, and was executed in 2012, adding
that the software were now obsolete and needed to be upgraded.
“As at
today, when you look at it very well, the software is obsolete. If you buy your
computer in 2008 and compare it to what we have in 2018, you will see you need
to upgrade the software.
“There must
be some upgrade. It is just to upgrade what we have and to incorporate very
important component which is the training side of it.
“This is
part of this contract, to continuously train people on how to use the equipment
and the analysis of the data is the one that is most critical and you can’t
train an expert in one week.
“It is an
ongoing thing and that is the whole essence of the upgrade. Thank God for the
Federal Executive Council (FEC), the upgrade was approved on Wednesday for us
to do proper accident investigation,’’ the commissioner said.
Mr. Olateru
further disclosed that the AIB had concluded plans to release another six
accident reports by the end of March, which would bring to a total of 16
reports, released since his assumption of office in January 2017.
(NAN)
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