Sudanese Aviation confirms safety commitment

Sudan's Aviation Authority affirms committing to safety procedures Khartoum - Abed Algayoum Ashmeag The Sudanese Aviation Authority is keen on ensuring that all domestic airline companies are committed to the safety regulations and procedures required in the aviation industry said the Sudanese aviation expert Abdullah Safi al-Nour. Speaking to Arabstoday al-Nour said that: "There is a special section within the Sudanese Aviation Authority tasked with following up on the validity of domestic companies planes, including private ones." He denied what was issued recently in some reports about the aviation sector in Sudan being largely affected by the US bans imposed on the country since 1997. However he admitted that these bans could have some effects over the companies which operate US made planes. Al-Nour explained the frequent air crashes taking place in the countryas a result of: "Testing and unfavourable weather in most of the cases, like the latest incident in which the endowments minister Ghazi al-Sadek was killed on Sunday." He added that human errors are sometimes behind these kind of incidents. Al-Nour denied that some incidents could have taken place due to technical defects in Sudan's Russian-made aircraft, like the Antonov planes, saying that even the western modern planes are subject to technical problems sometimes. Aviation Authority spokesperson Abdelhafez Ibrahim denied the authority is not acting firmly enough on Sudanese private airlines companies, stressing that: "No Sudanese plane can take off before making sure all the safety factors are guaranteed." While he admitted that Sudanese aviation was affected by the US ban, Ibrahim insisted that this is not the reason behind air crashes in Sudan. Ibrahim also explained that the Aviation Authority is responsible only for the civil aviation, while the military aviation (which saw most of the crashes that took place in the last 20 years) is totally directed by the army. "The Sudanese Airlines recorded only two major incidents throughout the last 40 years. The latest took place in 2008." The Sudanese official didn't explain the reasons behind the two incidents but he said: "It is well known that 80 percent of aviation incidents are due to human error." Ibrahim hailed the efficiency of the Sudanese rescue teams, giving examples of their success in saving 180 passengers out of 204 who boarded the Airbus plane which set fire in Khartoum airport in 2008. "Our general efforts were hailed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which announced in its report for 2011 that Sudan has no worrying issues in applying safety regulation." Meanwhile, a source from a private Sudanese airline company who requested anonymity said to Arabstoday that the aviation safety procedures in Sudan have seen remarkable improvement recently compared to the last few years. The source blamed Sudan's dependence on Russian-made aircraft for the recent aviation incidents that took place in the country, adding that most of the Sudanese aviation technicians are not familiar with the Russian planes as they used to deal with western-made planes. "The US bans are also affecting aviation in Sudan as it is too hard for the Sudanese companies to obtain the needed spare parts for the US and western planes they have. This may push them into using invalid parts sometimes," the source said. When asked if the source has evidence to support this claim he said this is just an "expected issue" under these circumstances. The source believed that the Sudanese technicians are yet to gain enough experience in dealing with the Russian made aircraft, which has been largely used in Sudan since US bans were imposed on the country in 1997.