The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has released its audit report into the series of incidents involving Azman air Boeing 737 which led to the grounding of the airline’s operations.
The NCAA over a month ago had in a statement promised to conduct a comprehensive audit of Azman Air in the areas of operations, airworthiness, training, licensing, financial health and any other area determined to be necessary during the exercise.
The audited report, dated April 2, 2021, and signed by the Director-General of NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu, shown that the airline was found culpable of violating certain provisions of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations (NCARs) with regards to the provision of resources and discharge of the duties of the Accountable Manager of the airline.
Others are regarding the discharge of the duties of the Chief Pilot, thereby unable to maintain safe commercial flight operations, complete non-staffing of the Safety Management Department and staffing of the Quality Management Department with only one officer, thereby making it impossible to effectively implement Safety and Quality Management Systems functions as required by the NCARs.
“This is evidenced by the fact that the Chief Pilot did not know that some of his pilots were overdue for SMS, CRM training, etc, and were not making technical log entries and signing voyage reports as required by Nig.CARs 8.5.1.19.”
The NCAA report also revealed that some critical personnel of the airline like the Accountable Manager exhibited a lack of understanding of his duties and responsibilities as contained in the Operations Manuals.
The same was also discovered of the Chief Pilot reported having exhibited a lack of understanding of his duties and responsibilities as contained in the Operations Manuals.
The report further explained that the Director of Maintenance, DOM, failed to ensure that approved Maintenance Control Manual Procedures are effectively implemented which led to numerous safety-critical non-conformities including lack of access to maintenance data by the engineers in Abuja; lack of effective tool control (eg use of bogus pressure gauge with an incorrect calibration certificate in Abuja)
Also, ineffective monitoring of tire wear; overdue engineers training in Human Factors; outdated B737 Approved Maintenance Programme; duty time limitation exceedance; ineffective monitoring of maintenance by the DOM as he is located in Kano instead of the approved maintenance base in Lagos.
“This is evidenced by the fact that FDR analysis on the B737 (eg 5N-SYS) revealed several exceedances,s and the DFO could not show any evidence of actions taken to check the trend.
“This is further evidenced by lack of demonstration of knowledge of the Nig. CARs related to Flight Data Analysis and Flight Operations Management in general. Thirdly, this is evidenced by lack of safety officer(s) in the flight operations department to support the Flight Data Analysis Programme (Nig.CARs 9.2.2.11)”.
The investigation by the audit team of inspectors also discovered that Azman Air Ltd was also found to violate Civil Aviation Act, 2006 as regards to non-remittance of 5% Ticket Sales Charge TSC and Cargo Sales Charge, CSC and indebted to the Authority to the tune of One billion Five Hundred and Forty-Five Million, Two hundred and Sixty Two thousand One hundred and Twenty naira, Thirty-One kobo (N1,545,262,120.31) as at December 2020.
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