For proper accident investigation, the Federal Government has approved the upgrade of the obsolete material science and flight safety laboratories which would help the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) to investigate accidents in record time.

Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) Akin Olateru said the cost for the upgrade of the software could be huge considering that the facilities have to be inputted with high-technology to make them function efficiently.

He further disclosed that the agency has two laboratories; the flight safety laboratory and the material science laboratory. 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.

Olateru stated that the contract for the laboratories started in 2008 and was executed in 2012, stressing that the software is now obsolete and needed to be upgraded.

He said, “This contract was executed in 2012. They started it in 2008 and finally executed due to whatever reason in 2012. By that time, as at today, look at it very well, the software is obsolete. If you buy your computer in 2008 and compare it with what we have in 2018, 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 FEC, the upgrade was approved on Wednesday for us to do proper accident investigation”.

This is coming as the AIB has concluded plans to release another six accident reports in the next 30 days, that is, before the end of February 2018.

The release of six more reports before next month would bring the total number of reports released by Olateru since he assumed office on January 13, 2017 to 16, excluding one safety bulletin.

He said that after assuming office, he did a review and discovered that there were 27 pending accident reports that had gathered dust on the shelf with some dating back to 2005 and wondered what went wrong with inability to release the reports for stakeholders to apply the safety recommendations by the investigators.

He stated that in line with global recommendation, accident investigation should be concluded within a year.

“When we came in, I did a review. We had 27 pending accident reports. Some dates back to 2005 and we were in 2017. I was wondering what really went wrong.  Just like the Commissioner, Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency (BAGAIA) Caj Frostell said, accident investigation should be concluded within a year. We set everything in motion. Funding was another problem. In carrying out accident investigation, you need a lot of resources; manpower and finance. We pushed everything in motion and through the support of the Minister of State for Aviation, he gave us maximum support and we did what we were supposed to do. To the glory of God, we released 11 reports by December 2017. One year, ten final reports and one safety bulletin are some of the things we did last year”