Two deadly air crashes in Africa

Two major air disasters happened in Africa in the last few days. The first on October 31, involved a Russian Airbus A321-200, which crashed 23 minutes after taking off from Egypt’s resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. It has been described as the worst disaster in Russia’s aviation history. The second […]

Two major air disasters happened in Africa in the last few days. The first on October 31, involved a Russian Airbus A321-200, which crashed 23 minutes after taking off from Egypt’s resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. It has been described as the worst disaster in Russia’s aviation history. The second came barely four days after in South Sudan where a Soviet-built Antonov AN-12 cargo plane heading to the oilfields of Paloich in Upper Nile State from the capital Juba, crashed half a mile from the runway, killing 37 people. There were two survivors, one a 13-month-old baby.
The black boxes of the two ill-fated planes have been recovered and investigations into the possible causes of the crashes are ongoing. The lone adult survivor of the Tajikistan-registered Antonov plane operated by Allied Services Ltd, Wuor Arop, told Associated Press from his hospital bed that the plane was overloaded. Head of South Sudan Civil Aviation Authority Stephen Warikozi said the flight was carrying its maximum cargo, citing the cargo manifest. He said a passenger manifest was not found, an indication the plane may have crashed due to overloading, but it is too early to make conclusions.
The crash of the Russian passenger plane, described as one of the worst air disasters in Egypt, overshadowed the South Sudan mishap because of the sheer number of casualties and the politics involved. Officials are investigating what may have brought down Russia-operated Metrojet Flight 9268 while on its way to St Petersburg from the Red Sea resort when it disappeared from radar screens around 30,000 feet. Egypt, which has a rich tourism industry, initially dismissed suggestions that a bomb exploded on the plane, fearing that would deal a deadly blow to its tourism industry. A team of experts from Egypt, Russia, France, Germany and Ireland have said black boxes recovered from the crash site showed that “a noise was heard in the last second of the … recording,” which has been sent to a specialist laboratory for analysis.
Western governments have indicated that the noise may have been from a bomb or explosives, raising the possibility the devices were smuggled into the plane’s hold. Investigators said they were “90 percent sure” the noise in the cockpit recording was explosion caused by a bomb. The focus of suspicion in the downing of the jet, which broke up mid-air, has increasingly zeroed in on both the airport’s luggage-handling arrangements and those involved in it.
If a bomb was actually planted in the plane, there are already indications of who did it. Sinai Province, an affiliate of the Islamic State which is fighting Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, has claimed responsibility, saying they brought down the plane as revenge for Russian air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria. If this group indeed did the job, then it will be one of the worst such terrorist outrages since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre. It would however take weeks or months to conclusively determine whether a bomb downed the Russian jet.
The Russian air disaster highlights the imperative for fundamental overhaul of global aviation security as fears continue to mount that flight safety is being compromised at many international airports. The incident makes it obvious that a new international framework is required to prevent airport security weaknesses being exploited by terrorists.
Urgent changes are needed to upgrade security checks made on airport staff before they reach sensitive areas as well as thorough the raising of vetting and recruitment process of airport workers.
There is a lesson that Nigeria, which is battling Boko Haram terrorists, can learn from this fatal crash. Our airports are so porous that all kinds of people are found in areas that are supposedly out of bounds. Now is the time to tighten security at our airports – especially Abuja, Lagos and Kano – as the Nigerian military makes the final push against insurgents.