AIB leads global aviation with digital reporting system

Accident Investigation Bureau-Nigeria (AIB-N) is going further from the conventional air accident and incident reporting system as stipulated in Annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) recommendations, to a digitalized reporting system, which no country in the world has attained as far as accidents and incidents investigation and prevention reporting is concerned.

The Commissioner and the Chief Executive Officer, Engr. Akin Olateru of the AIB-N disclosed that the digitalised reporting system, at the ongoing ‘Industry Engagement on the review of Accident Reports’ at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja.

Engr. Akin Olateru, the Commissioner and the Chief Executive Officer of the AIB-N disclosed the epoch-making initiative at the ongoing ‘Industry Engagement on the review of Accident Reports’ at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja.

“The fact is the world standard, which is ICAO, has a format of reporting the final reports that are a hundred pages presented to the world and on the website. What we are trying to do is to challenge the status quo, to actually find a better way of getting this to the public. Today, how many people are reading reports (accidents and incidents)? You have this report about 300 pages of what happened, safety recommendations, and so on. What we are trying to do is to digitalize graphically with a database of the same reports,” Olateru said while explaining the motive and relevance of the new initiative.

“We are going to be doing that soon, to make it easier for the airlines to read, for anybody of interest to go to a particular section rather than flipping through pages of documents. If it is on human factors, you just click on the graphic and it will tell you everything on human factors. If it is about the engine, the same thing applies.

The entire essence is about simplifying the way we communicate with the rest of the world in terms of our by-products and it has been discussed at the highest level at ICAO and is being accepted. By the time we are done, Nigeria will be the first in the world that would come up with this format. That is what I mean by Nigeria will lead the world very soon in terms of accident investigation reporting system.”