AIB releases report on Kabo Air flight conveying pilgrims

The Accident Investigation Bureau Nigeria (AIB-N) yesterday released to the public three final accident and serious incident reports and two Safety Bulletins on occurrences that happened within the Nigerian airspace.

This is coming three weeks after the Bureau released four accident reports.

Alongside the three final accident and serious incident reports and two Safety Bulletins released were 16 Safety Recommendations which it said would help in preventing similar accidents or serious incidents from reoccurring.

During a virtual presentation of the report, the Commissioner of the Bureau, Engr. Akin Olateru, stated that the newly released reports brought the number of reports released by the Bureau since inception to 59 with 40 of them released under his administration.

Olateru said the Safety Recommendations released since AIB inception and under his administration totals 211 and 127 respectively.

Meanwhile, Olateru said the bureau has set an 18-month timeline for the release of final reports on any accident or incident, lamenting that it is no longer acceptable to delay reports.

One of the reports released was the Serious Incident involving a Boeing 747-200 aircraft owned and operated by Kabo Air Ltd with nationality and registration marks 5N-JRM which occurred at Sultan Abubakar Airport, Sokoto (DNSO), Sokoto State on 4th October, 2013.

There were 512 persons who were pilgrims heading to Saudi Arabia onboard, including 18 crew members.

The AIB blamed the incident on “inappropriate visual approach profile at night with no vertical guidance, saying, “Unserviceable Visual Approach Slope Indicator (VASI) on Runway 26 and Decision to land on the non-precision runway 26 at night” were the contributory factor.

The report however indicated that the flight data recorder was unserviceable while the CVR recording pertinent to the occurrence was over written.

“The lack of data from the FDR and CVR significantly constrained the determination of the aircraft approach profile and the details of the sequence of events,” the report added.

Olateru stated that the two safety bulletins newly released make a total of three Safety Bulletins released by AIB.