EXPOSED: 2 Incidents Plane Had Before Mid-Air Collision In Nairobi

It is now emerging that a training school aircraft which crashed in Nairobi County following a mid-air collision with a passenger aircraft had been involved in two prior incidents.

The incidents were treated as the subject of investigations by the Ministry of Transport with findings stressing the importance of enhanced training for the students learning how to fly to enable them to handle emergencies better.

A trainee pilot and an instructor lost their lives in the incident, adding to a series of accidents that have now emerged, involving the same aircraft as well as the same flying school based at Wilson Airport.

The aircraft, a Cessna 172M, serial number 172-65726, is operated by Ninety-Nines Flying School and registered on August 2, 2018. The plane was manufactured in 1976 and it is part of the fleet used in training pilots at the flying school.

The aircraft has been involved in two incidents before yesterday’s fatal crash and both of them were investigated by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Department of the Ministry of Transport, with one of them termed by the department as serious.

A report from the investigation department indicates that at the beginning of January 2021, the aircraft failed to land properly at Wilson Airport while undertaking a training flight.

Additionally, the trainee pilot who had just 88 hours of recorded flying time was cleared to fly solo and had successfully executed the first of three touch-and-go flights before tragedy struck.

In another case, while coming in for the second landing on runway 7 at Wilson, the aircraft bounced and lifted into the air, with the student behind the controls attempting to land again before it bounced and the nose wheel of the craft hit the ground, occasioning damage to the aircraft as well as affecting the runway owing to the unorthodox landing.

Investigators in the department's report stated the probable cause of this incident as “The pilot’s failure to follow baulked landing procedures following a bounced landing resulting in propeller strike, detachment of the nose landing gear wheel assembly, fork and subsequent damage to the aircraft."

In October 2020, the same aircraft encountered trouble during takeoff from Wilson for a training cross-country flight that would have seen the trainee pilot and the trainer fly to Narok County and back.

The flight however ran into trouble upon take off, with strange noises heard coming from the propeller. The student trainee, with an experience of 128 flying hours attempted to land the plane back at Wilson but it went over the edge of the runway and landed in the grassy areas next to the runway.

Both the trainee and the trainer escaped unhurt, while the aircraft sustained damage to the nose wheel steering link assembly.

For the 2021 incident, the investigators recommended that “the Ninety-Nine Flying School reviews and enhances its safety management systems and training programmes to improve students' readiness to execute emergency manoeuvres and to properly record training on emergency manoeuvres in the pilot training files”.

In a near similar recommendation, the investigators in their preliminary report on the 2020 incident, emphasised the need for the approved training organisations to enhance the CESSNA 172 training programmes to ensure student pilots are adequately trained for operations in abnormal conditions, and for the instructor pilot to remind the student pilot about the correct aircraft handling techniques, before landing during emergencies.