Nigeria’s CAA Should Absorb Quality Assurance Officers from Airlines- Gbenga Olowo
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For safety concern, the aviation world has been tasked to explore a novel means by which remuneration and job progression of Quality Assurance Managers will not be tied to the airlines’ owners/Chief Executive Officers but somewhere else, perhaps the regulatory authority.
Dr Gbenga Gabriel Olowo, President, Sabre Network West Africa, made the postulation at the first international conference in the year 2021 on safety, held at Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria.
The conference with the theme, “Prevention of Human Factors in Air Accident Occurrences” was put together by the Accident Investigation Bureau, AIB, and the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents, LAAC.
Dr Olowo, who has garnered about four decades of cognate experience in the air transport industry noted that the Quality Assurance Managers are more susceptible to the whims and caprices of their employers who in most cases in the Nigerian environment, are owners/Chief Executive Officers of the airlines.
He reasoned that fear of losing their jobs, since on most occasions the Quality Assurance Manager reports directly to his CEO, might overwhelm the Quality Assurance Manager and as such, sacrifice professional ethics on the altar of pleasing the airline owner to secure his job and the bigger picture of safety play down.
Olowo further said that if the burden of job insecurity is removed, which employment and payment of salary by the regulatory authority will help to achieve, compromise on safety standards will be reduced to the barest minimum if not eliminated.
He said his proposition should help reduce allegiance to the CEO but to the ethical standards which border on safety and will surely culminate in a safer operating environment where aviation will continue to flourish.
The veteran aviation professional who also is the President, Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative, ASRTI, the well-known pressure group and think tank on aviation issues, urged the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, to give strong consideration to his suggestion and absorb the airlines’ Assurance Managers, by including them on its nominal role for the purpose of remuneration and career progression.
Gbenga Olowo further explained that the airlines’ Quality Assurance Officers would then be seen as one of the inspectors from the regulatory authority hence, they would be more empowered to discharge their task without fear or favour.
Speaking in the same vein, another veteran, Alhaji Muneer Bankole, Group Managing Director, Medview Airline, said the presence of the inspectors in airlines offices is not to shut down the airline operations but to call attention to gaps that need attention and the solution will jointly be fashioned-out to ultimately ensure the gaps are closed.
Alhaji Muneer Bankole explained that such laudable measure to a serious operator, does not pose any threat but assistance to enable the operator to continue in business as, its Achilles heels would be jointly identified and proposal for rectification jointly agreed upon and as such, the operator would remain in business.
He urged his colleagues and the airlines’ employees to have a change of outlook about the inspectors as they are partners in progress for the good of the airlines and ultimately for the good of the entire air transport ecosystem.
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