In defence of Dana Aiirlines' maintenance practices

BY: Capt. Dele Ore

I am constrained to give my comment on most of the aspects of the report of that Technical and Administration Review Panel on Domestic Airlines which was set up by the Federal Ministry of Aviation and whose report was submitted recently. The report has shown that the panel lacked the capability for their assignment based on the skill, knowledge, experience and qualification of its individual member and panel collectively. Because of the panel’s limitation, it is therefore not surprising the low quality and misleading final report. The uninitiated members of the public were fed with the panel’s report which is only fit to be thrown into the dust –bin.

The report should be thrown away in its entirety otherwise when we analyze it fully it will embarrass the Government and people of Nigeria. The report will expose Nigeria into unlimited liability. Coincidentally, the President of ICAO, Dr Gonzalez only last week was full of praises and admiration for the effectiveness of the safety oversight system available in Nigeria. This same system in Nigeria has been ignorantly adjudged faulty by this panel:-

The panel definitely did not have sufficient time and expertise to do a good job hence the bundle of misinformation. 

Specifically the panel found out that certain maintenance practices by DANA Airline particularly the use of Technical log book were not in conformity with Standard And Recommended Practices. This cannot be true but can be deduced that the panel did not understand the proper use of Technical logbook.

Another grievous issue is contained in this quote from the panel report that:

“The panel discovered in the course of its investigation that Dana Airlines carried out an engine compressor wash” on some of its aircraft without any prior entry in its technical log book to show what necessitated this action”  

On this issue you are expected to praise DANA Airlines foresight and ingenuity to start that programme which is pro-active. The panel erroneously concluded that “engine Compressor wash” was a maintenance action carried out without any recorded engine status. They inferred that. “It is improbable that the engine compressor wash was carried out as a routine maintenance activity since it was not within the programmes interval in the Maintenance Control Manual”.

I am very surprised that no member of the panel was knowledgeable on the subject matter leading to this incorrect judgment resulting in castigation of DANA AIRLINE instead of commending their effort on this.

For the records, please note that the Dana programme as we now know was specifically embarked upon as a requirement mainly due to the dusty environment in which the engines operate knowing the Sahara Desert is just north of Nigeria and the damaging effect is more pronounced during harmattan dust haze. Over the time the environment could cause components of the engine internals to accumulate dust which could deteriorate engine performance. You don’t have to have any recorded defect in the engine before embarking on engine Compression wash.

All these misinformation and public sentiments are capable of unnecessarily prolonging the continued grounding of the remaining aircraft on the fleet of Dana Airline. May I therefore use this medium to call on everyone concerned to allow Dana Airline to resume commercial passenger operation without further delays. The airline has lived up to her responsibility and continued grounding will do more harm than good to the industry. We share in the grieve of bereaved families and our condolences to all friends and relatives as well as the President Commander-in-Chief and the entire people of Nigeria for the unfortunate disaster.

Capt. Dele Ore is the Chairman of Aviation Round Table, Lagos