A pilot, Benson Ikponwosa on Monday said the problem with the Nigerian aviation industry is the perception that we have a perfect system while in the real sense the system is outdated.
Mr Ikponwosa, who was speaking as a guest on Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily, said because our pilots think they are perfect, they die in ignorance.
“It could happen in those days that a perfectly normal pilot, who’s been flying on line, he goes for recurrent training. Suddenly, he fails in his ability to control the simulator if he was flying a twin engine airplane; he fails in his ability to control that airplane on one engine when the simulator simulate one engine situation for him.
“If he was flying a four engine airplane, he fails in his ability, if he was a first officer to fly that aeroplane on three engines or if he was a captain to fly it on two engines.
“When these things happen in those days, those pilots, what do the airlines do? They ground them until they are able to show that they can now handle the airplanes in those situations.”
Mr Ikponwosa said this is not the case nowadays where airlines recruit in-house trainers for their pilot because it was too expensive to send pilots out for training.
He said the problem with these in-house trainings is that “everybody passes” the test at the end of the recurrent training.
