AIB set to acquire drones for investigation of crashes

The Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) has commenced the process of acquiring drones to enhance air accident investigation in the country.

This was disclosed during a gateway forum organised by aviation journalists at the weekend, the AIB Commissioner, Mr Akin Olateru, said the use of drones would assist the bureau to record and capture certain moments that would be vital for unravelling the cause of a crash in their investigation.

Globally, drones also called Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are deployed for use in capturing live events, surveying dangerous areas, delivery of goods, shooting films, commercial amongst others.

The introduction of the technology, the AIB believes would enhance the seamless efforts of unravelling the cause of any accident or incident.

While declaring that the process of acquiring the drones and training of air safety investigators were currently ongoing, Olateru, however, added that to be licensed in the use of a drone by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), one of the requirements is the training of operators and they were in the process of certification.

He said: “To operate a drone you need a license and we are sorting that out the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority NCAA, in getting the license part of the requirements is to train your people on how to navigate the drone which we are certified they have to be licensed, the operator has to be licensed by the NCAA, so we are in the process of normalising all the documents.”

Equally, the Commissioner said with the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval of an AIB training school to be built in Abuja, that it would save government huge amount of US dollars being spent on training overseas.

The bureau Olateru said had drawn up a curriculum with Crownfield University, Singapore training institute and the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria.

“We too can earn money, we too can train Africans, we can train people from Europe on accident investigation and the auxiliary cost that goes with it, so we want to make it a world-class institution because we really want to push this training so that we can earn some good money from it for the country and save us money as well,” he said.