Airlines grounded, aviation overhaul ordered after crash

After two major plane crashes in less than two months, an angry President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered two airlines grounded and called for all commercial aircraft to be inspected within a week. Obasanjo called an emergency meeting of airline industry officials on Tuesday following last weekend’s disaster in which 107 people died - most of them schoolchildren on their way home for Christmas - when a DC-9 operated by Sosoliso Airlines crashed on landing in southern Port Harcourt. Sosoliso Airlines and Chanchangi Airlines are to stop operations immediately pending recertification of their aircraft, Obasanjo said, citing as grounds for the action intelligence reports indicating technical problems with some of their aircraft only this month. Second-hand aircraft, lack of maintenance and poor runways and infrastructure are some of the factors blamed for the high number of incidents concerning domestic carriers in Africa. “All aircraft flying Nigeria’s air space will be checked out within a week and those found to be defective in any way, in servicing record, age, maintenance and operational capacity, will be grounded,” the Nigerian president said, reading from an official statement issued after the meeting. Nigeria has sought the assistance of the International Civil Aviation Organisation to help organise the inspections and ensure their integrity, he said. “The greatest bane of the aviation industry (in Nigeria) is corruption,” Obasanjo later added, alleging that both airline operators and the regulatory agencies often connived in “cutting corners”. The Sololiso plane crashed while approaching the runway during a storm and was the second major air accident in the country in less than two months. A Bellview airliner crashed on 22 October soon after taking off from Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, killing all 117 people on board. Aviation Minister Babalola Borishade acknowledged on Tuesday that the country aviation infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. “We have a communication system that is obsolete, and we have a physical infrastructure that has gone derelict,” he said. Further measures to be taken to restore confidence in air travel in Nigeria include urgent repair of airport facilities to meet international standards and radar coverage for all of the country’s 32 airports by December 2006, the government said.