The Director of Safety Regulations of Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Daniel Acquah has debunked claims that the Starbow crash-landing at the Kotoka International Airport was as a result of bad weather.

One of the flights of Starbow with 65 passengers and 5 crew on Saturday skidded off the runway in an attempt to take off, with some of the passengers suffering minor injuries.

Some of the traumatised passengers blamed the plane crash on bad weather.

But speaking on Ultimate Breakfast Show with Lantam Papanko, Mr Acquah failed to mention the cause of the plane crash ascertained from their preliminary investigations insisting that it was not due to bad weather.

The Director of Safety Regulations of GCCA added that the airport would have been closed down on the Saturday if the weather was bad saying the plane crash was also not due to pilot error describing him as ‘experienced’.

He described the incident as ‘unfortunate’ assuring that flying is still safe for both passenger airlines and cargo airlines.

According to him, the flight data recorder must be decoded to compare the information they have gathered on the ground before they can come out publicly with the cause of the plane crash.

‘…I want to assure the general public that it was one of incidents. Flying is still safe,…we always investigates incidents and accidents…oh the problem wasn’t due to bad weather because, there were other flights taking off and landing that day. The Kotoka Airport was never closed down, so Starbow incident wasn’t a weather issue, but we are still investigating to find out the actual cause of the aircraft veering off the runway, at this stage we cannot divulge anything from the preliminary investigations because you may be apportioning blame where it is not right, so we need to complete the investigations,’ he explained.

Mr Acquah stated that they are yet to conclude their investigations.

He indicated that various inspections of airlines are carried out on daily basis saying GCAA staff are well trained.

Starbow in a statement on Sunday suspended its operations due to the plane crash assuring to work with GCAA and other stakeholders to unravel the cause of the incident.

The country has recorded several crash-landing since 2000 as some Ghanaians have questioned the competence of the GCAA.

Source: Ultimatefmonline.com