Monster in the Air (1)

I must confess I am one of those who don’t find air travel comfortable even though comfort is what a plane is supposed to provide to the traveller. The fact is I have a phobia for air travelling.

Despite the fact that I have travelled far and wide by air, I am yet at this age to get used to flying. A day before I am scheduled to travel by air ,I have all types of dreams. Believe me it is not a funny matter.

Whenever I arrive at the airport and I look at the plane I am going to board on the tarmac, I start having butterflies in my stomach. ‘’This monster again’’ I always say to myself.

Who says the plane is not a monster, flying in the air? It is, in every sense of the word. After everybody has boarded and the doors are shut, what is left? All the passengers are trapped in the bowel of this monster, called plane. Until it lands at its destination, it is prayers from all. But after safe landing, you look at the passengers and it is all smiles.

Plane crash 

The pilots and experts in the aviation industry will tell us the safest means of travelling is by air. That may be true because of the fact that air disasters are few and far between. Yet, when they occur, the casualties are more than for instance what one finds in 10 or 20 accidents on the roads or in a shipwreck.

It is probably the swiftness with which air disasters are reported round the world that brings to the fore the risks involved in air travelling.

Various experts, especially from the manufacturers of aircraft and the owners of the aircraft, would rush to the scene of a disaster looking for the black box. The black box, we are told,usually contains the voices of the pilots and they can tell the last moments before the plane crashed after deciphering the contents of the black box.

In most cases, we are never told the outcome of the investigations after a plane crash even if the black box is found. What we are told are mere speculations, blaming the crash either on human error or technical or mechanical fault.

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The latest air crash recorded was that of the Germanwing Air Bus 320 that went down in the French Alps on March 24, 2015 with 150 unfortunate souls travelling from the Spanish city of Barcelona to Dusseldorf in Germany.

What we have been told by investigators is that the co-pilot deliberately flew the plane into the French Alps after shutting out the pilot from the cockpit. The pilot had left his co-pilot alone to go to the washroom and was never allowed back into the cockpit for the final descent into Dusseldorf.

The argument sounds plausible but visits to the house of the co-pilot, contacts with his girlfriend and other friends and relatives have not revealed any tell-tale evidence.

But those 150 souls are gone forever, never to live to tell their own story. Yet, they might have gone through a harrowing experience when they realised their plane was going to crash. The question ,therefore, is was the crash deliberate or an accident?

Malaysian tragedy

Now, let us look at the tragedy that befell Malaysia following the crash of two Malaysian Airlines planes within a space of four months.

First was Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, a scheduled international passenger flight that disappeared on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Beijing with 234 passengers, including a crew of 12.

In spite of international search efforts which begun in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the flight signal was lost, there has been no trace of the aircraft and its passengers more than a year after that disaster.

Then, as if there was a curse on Malaysian Airlines, four months later, its flight MH 17 carrying 298 people, including the crew, was believed to have been shot down near the Russian border with Ukraine, even though this has been denied by the Russian government and separatists.

Flight MH 17 operated on a Boeing 777 departed Amsterdam at 12:15p.m. and was estimated to arrive at Kuala Lumpur the following day, July 18 at 6:10 Malaysian time.

In the case of MH 17, like the Germanwing disaster, the mutilated bodies of the passengers were recovered and buried.

But who will think of such disasters and would not fear air travel when just a little mistake will send so many people to their untimely death without a word.

Now, I will relate some personal experiences I have gone through and some air disasters I am familiar with in this part of our world.

Ghana has been lucky when it comes to air disasters. Air crashes have been very rare, making Ghana’s air space very safe for airlines. However, there is one particular air crash I will never forget. It was June 5, 2000. I had gone to a popular Tuo-zaafi spot at Adabraka near the market to have my lunch. It was during the peak of the rainy season and it was very cloudy.

As I took my seat to be served, I looked up into the sky and the weather was bad. I don’t know what came over me but I just told myself that that was a case of poor visibility as the aviation people would put it. I then just thought that it would be difficult for any aircraft coming into Accra to be able to land safely in that terrible weather.

Airlink disaster

Just then, I was served my meal and I forgot about all the negative things I was thinking about. After I was done with my food, I left Adabraka and headed for my office at Osu. I had tuned into GBC on my car radio and the time was one o’clock. The first news item struck me like a thunderbolt. There had been an air crash at the Accra Airport involving an Air Link aircraft from Tamale.

I couldn’t believe my ears. There were casualties. But one of the survivors was a friend and a brother, Alhaji Abdullai Yahaya, a former chairman of Tamale Urban Council some time ago. Chairman was hospitalised at the 37 Military Hospital for a long time but he is still alive today to tell his story. 

I can’t remember any other major air crash apart from the recent one involving a Nigerian cargo plane that went through the walls of the airport near El-Wak and ran into a trotro bus, killing the driver in the process.

This brings me to the aviation industry in Nigeria where I spent about 15 years plying my trade as a journalist between 1983 and 1997. Air crashes were common phenomenon in Nigeria and apart from the many crashes that occurred during my sojourn there, I also personally had some nasty experiences while flying.

I can’t forget one particular crash involving an air force plane just after it took-off from Murtala International Airport on its way back to Kaduna. We were told the air craft was not in the best of shape but it managed to carry mainly middle level officers on course at the Nigerian Defence Academy at Jaji, near Kaduna, to Lagos.

Unfortunately, on the return trip, many officers smuggled their children going back to school in Kaduna onto the plane. The ailing plane was probably overloaded and just came down as it took off, killing all 158 passengers on board, including six Ghanaian officers. It was reported that the two engines failed one after the other.

I can never forget one instance when the Chairman of the Nigerian Community Bank, a lady, who after closing from the office one Friday decided to go and visit her daughter in Abuja without even passing through her house in Lagos. The plane crashed outside Abuja while the daughter was waiting to receive her mother at the Abuja International Airport.