The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Uganda has shown its weaknesses when the three accidents that occurred over the last 13 months were investigated and showed a serious factor of human error. It was discovered that the authority has ignored some of the straightforward rules like labeling an airstrip a no-fly zone and some outdated forbidden aircrafts from other countries and regions are being allowed to fly in the country’s space.
The minister of Works and Transport Mr. John Nasasira toughly told the authority (CAA) to strictly follow its rules and regulations. He said some of the countries in charge of registering the outdated and disqualified aircraft are not doing their work and that the documents look real but when the aircrafts are not in a good shape.
Nasaira also said that they should go through the reports and deal with the people in charge one by one and that the country has disqualified airlines registered in or coming from Sao Tome, Equatorial Guinea and Principe.
The CAA officials said that in 2010, eight Airbus planes burst their tyres while landing but they did not say what the cause was. This was reported two weeks after a 9pm Air Rwanda plane flying from Kigali was forced to go back after a Kenya Airways plane flying to Nairobi was delayed for two hours on the Entebbe Airport runway.
Wenceslaus Rama Makuza, the Executive Director of CAA, said they are not permitted to check if every aircraft landing at Entebbe is supposed to fly because the reports from the states of the aircrafts’ origin are always believed to be true and they also believe operators like to fly safe airplanes.
The first accident among those that were investigated was an aircraft managed by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) that crushed on November 17, 2009 at Adjumani airfield.
The accident’s lead investigator Mr. Capt. Jack Calnan said the aircraft landed at 10.45am in Adjumani and stayed there for not more than four and a half hours after getting permission from the military to leave Kajjansi airfield at 9.am.and head to Adjumani airstrip. The airstrip is long and wide enough for the plane but because of the poor maintenance, it had grown very tall grass therefore leaving a narrow murram strip of 3 meters. He continued and said before the aircraft had decided to returned to Kajjansi, a vehicle for cutting the grass had been driven along the left side of the runway which was not done on the right side, so when it was taking off, its right wing picked a lot of grass which stuck between the aileron, flap and the wing leading to the failure of the flight controls therefore the crashing of the plane leaving the pilot and the passengers with minor injuries.
Capt. Calnan said that the CAA had stopped the use of the Adjumani airfield after the 30th October 2009 survey had found it inappropriate but this notification was not prepared to the rest of the aviation industry. He also said that the accident had happened a month after the CAA had found that airstrip inappropriate andcould have been avoided if the UWA had known that the strip was impracticable.
The second accident was when an Illyushin IL-76T cargo plane made from Russia crashed on March 9, 2009 immediately after taking off from Entebbe airport and killed six people that were on board among them was a Burundian General going to Somalia to take office as second-in-command of the AMISOM troops and injuring two fishermen that were fishing in the lake.
Col Chris Mudoola a retired pilot investigated the whole accident and said the aircraft had been stopped from operating in October 2006 after its engines had past the time of operation and that the type of craft always had a pilot, co-pilot, flight radio operator, flight engineer and navigator but the navigator was also the flight radio operator therefore too much workload. He also said that the crew might not have rested for the necessary eight hours before the flight.
Makuza from CAA said that they are supposed to only check civilian aircraft meaning that those leaving the old airport do no get his permission. The Authority Industry does not carry out security supervision on Russian made airplanes like the Illyushin.
Col Mudoola also investigated the third accident when a police helicopter carrying the Prime Minister Prof Apollo Nsibambi and other ministers crashed at Bugiri hospital on March 2010.It happened because the pilot had ignored the warning lights that indicated there was a problem during the whole journey. Although the warning lights were still showing, the pilot still continued with the return flight leaving at 2.30pm for Kololo from Lwakhakha in Tororo.
The investigators said that the helicopter crashed 15 minutes after leaving Lwakhakha with an engine failure .Mr.Mudoola said that the accident happened because the pilot had failed to fulfill the well-known urgent break down measures in the flight manual therefore making it a human fault.
