It was Leonard Lawal a Nigerian stringer for Fortune magazine who first brought it to my notice. Contrary to my last post, the missing Beechcraft 1900D has not yet been found. This is the third in a series of accidents in the region. Two controlled flights into terrain CFIT's, (plane crashes to the uninitiated) have occured here in the last decade. A helicopter crashed in Obudu in 1992, killing ten persons, and two years ago, on Sunday September 17, 2006, a Donier aircraft, NAF 003, flying from Abuja to the resort in Obudu crashed on the Nkokugh mountains. Several service men lost thier lives. What is it about the area? Bebi airstrip is about 1ooo feet above sea level and surrounded by thickly forested mountains as high as 4000 feet above sea level, and it is uncharted territory not covered by aviation radar. A veritable Bermuda Triangle. There have been claims that the airstrip is illegal, which is also to say that the Shell airstrip in Osubi, Warri is illegal. The problem however does not lie in the difficult terrain only but in the essential 'unregulated nature' of the airstrip, putting in effect, pilots and travelers to the airstri p at grave risk. One can never tell if the ATC at the end of the line is drunk and having a bad day and tells you winds are gusting up to 40 knots while the reality is 200 knots. Perhaps it is time to hasten the regulation of airports and airstrips by the NCAA, of course the NCAA as it were suffers from a dearth of proffessionals who are already being lost due to attrition to private markets, to carry out this assignment. We cannot afford to loose more lives in this murky region.
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