AS constant rainy season approaches, it has become pertinent to remind the air traveling public around Nigeria in particular of the need to brace up for the season in view of the different challenges that may come their way during flights.
As expected, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the country’s civil aviation body will soon start rolling out weather advisory circulars to intimate airlines, pilots, passengers and other relevant stakeholders with common natural phenomenon that may crop up during flights.
It is generally known that thunderstorm phenomenon is a normal occurrence during rainy seasons which is not peculiar to Nigeria. Therefore, because such weather related hazards are natural phenomena beyond human making, whenever air travelers come across them, they should take solace in one thing, that the various aircraft they are flying in, have been designed to handle even severe turbulence.
In actual fact, turbulence in the air simply means, sudden change in winds direction which might disturb an aircraft’s wings and makes the conditions uncomfortable for passengers and this happens due to the thunderstorm and heavy winds which is a very common situation for planes but the good news is that this does not affect them on a large scale.
Therefore, when as a passenger your flight enters into turbulence, even though the situation can be a little uncomfortable, and it can sometimes be a little unexpected, the assurance is that such flight is rarely dangerous as the pilot in command has been adequately trained to overcome the storm.
For the fact that the aircraft you are in runs into bumpiness during a flight doesn’t mean that something is wrong with the plane, hence, there is the need for the Nigerian air travelers to not only control their anxieties but weigh what they push into the public domain when confronted with such weather related hazards.
As long as aircraft will continue to take off and land and as long as no one has the power to maneuver natural phenomena that are weather related, air transport must continue to experience turbulence.
When such hazards occur, passengers should equally realise that the pilots and the crew on board the same flights with them are not super humans but have the same life like them and since they also experience more tension during such storms, they only require optimum co-operations from passengers.
This brings to the fore again the recent drama recorded during a flight involving a United Nigeria Port Harcourt/Abuja bound flight which originally took off with clear and good weather forecast but however ran into turbulence on approaching Abuja.
The development according to a statement issued by the airline forced the pilot of the flight to divert back to Port Harcourt as the weather conditions were below the attachment airline’s operating requirements which is a normal safety measure.
As expected, since not all passengers can handle such sudden challenges in the same manner, the incident caused serious traffic in the social media with people casting doubts on the safety of aircraft flying in the country.
As earlier said, the passengers out of anxiety can voice out their opinions, but this kind of situation would have greatly been avoided with the right soothing language coming from the crew onboard such flights and other relevant authorities.
In other words, when such challenges occur, the crew has been trained to do everything to calm down passengers onboard the flights and assure them of their safety.
In doing this, the crew would have been able to, if not totally, but to a large extent convince such traumatised passengers that what the aircraft was experiencing at that particular point was the law of nature which the plane was capable of overcoming as it eventually did.
Without narrowing the issue down to the United Airlines’ experience, it is obvious that because many passengers still don’t understand turbulence, they get very frightened when they are confronted with one. Therefore, the time has come for the NCAA to embark on more aggressive education of air travelers across the country on the different weather related challenges like turbulence that are synonymous with air travels which can be more prevalent during rainy seasons.
While the NCAA is doing this, the crew of the different airlines should equally be reminded of their major roles which is not limited to just serving meals or putting on that ‘pepsodent’ smiles, but being able to calm down high tension during turbulence.
As the rainy season approaches, passengers need to be more positive as turbulence and other weather related challenges are bound to occur, and under this situation, even if you imagine that the plane you are in is about to flip over in the sky, it’s just not going to happen as the commercial aircraft are designed to withstand even the harshest of conditions.
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