The claim by the Accident Investigation Bureau that the Flight Data Recorder, a component of the crashed Dana Air’s plane, had been destroyed by post-crash inferno, heightened concern on Monday at the proceedings of a Coroner’s inquest in Lagos.
The Coroner, Mr. Oyetade Komolafe – sitting in Ikeja presides over the inquest into the death of the 153 persons on the plane and others on the ground in Iju Ishaga area of the state.
Mrs. Funmi Falana of Falana & Falana Chambers, the law firm which initiated the inquest, while cross-examining the Director of Engineering of the AIB, Mr. Emmanuel Dialla, during the proceedings, wondered why the FDR designed to be fire-proof could succumb to heat.
Dialla had said the tail section of the plane, which houses the FDR and the Cockpit Voice Recorder, was part of the 15 per cent of the plane recovered from the accident site.
He said the FDR and the CVR are the two black boxes of the plane, adding that the crashed plane’s CVR was recovered intact but the FDR had been badly affected.
“We got the CVR and we have downloaded it, but the FDR did not survive the heat,” he said.
Falana further asked why the FDR, which was confirmed by Dialla not to be less protected as the CVR, was destroyed by the heat.
The FDR is an electronic device for recording instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft, while the CVR is also an electronic device which records conversations between the pilot, the cabin crew and the Air Traffic Controller.
Dialla said, “The FDR is designed to be able to withstand heat at 1,000 for 30 minutes, but in this case, the fire was on for about 24 hours.”
A retired pilot, Captain Paul Porbeni, also asked Dialla, how the AIB was able to arrive at certain findings when the FDR could not be analysed.
But Dialla said the findings were deduced from the 31-minute CVR recording of the conversation of the pilot with the “First Officer.”
Responding to further questions, Dialla dismissed claims that the pilot was not qualified to fly the plane because he (the pilot) did not obtain airline transport pilot licence rating in the MD-83 plane, the model of the crashed Dana plane.
Falana confronted him with the AIB preliminary report which states, “The captain, aged 55, held an airline transport pilot license with type ratings in the A-320, DC-90, FK-28, and SF-340.”
But Dialla said, “The pilot would not have been allowed to fly if he did not have the rating.
He had over 18,116 hours of total time, including 16,416 hours of pilot-in-command.
“He had 7,461 hours in the accident model airplane, as pilot-in-command. If he did not have the rating it would be difficult for him to get over 7,000 hours as pilot-in-command. The regulatory bodies would not allow him to fly.”
The matter was adjourned till today (Tuesday) to enable technicians to attend to an electrical fault which resulted into smoke during the proceedings.
