June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The world's deadliest air disaster this year killed at least 163 people in Nigeria when a Dana Airlines Ltd. passenger plane slammed into a heavily populated suburb in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos.
The plane, a Boeing Co. MD-83 with 146 passengers and seven crew members, crashed into the Agege suburb yesterday as it was approaching Murtala Muhammed Airport on a flight from Abuja, the capital. A least 10 people on the ground were killed, Hakeem Bello, a spokesman for Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola, said in an e-mailed statement. The pilot was a U.S. citizen and the co-pilot was an Indian, the airline said.
"No survivors were found," Tony Usidamen, a spokesman for Dana Group, which owns the Lagos-based airline, said today in a phone interview. "As we speak 94 bodies have been recovered."
The crash was the worst civilian air disaster in Africa's top oil producer since Jan. 22, 1973, when a plane carrying 176 passengers and crew went down in the northern city of Kano, killing all on board. It was the fourth accident in 10 years that claimed the lives of more than 100 people. A military transport plane crashed in September 1992 shortly after takeoff from Lagos, killing 163 soldiers and crew aboard.
Mayday Call
"I hardly can find words to express it all; ordinary people trying to earn a living and ending up so tragically and untimely," Governor Fashola told reporters at the crash site, according to a statement from his office. "It's all so horrific, the pilot, the crew, young Nigerians whose lives have been so drastically and suddenly cut short."
Aviation Minister Stella Oduah said today on state-owned NTA television that the pilots issued a Mayday call to the Lagos control tower at 3:43 p.m. from about 11 nautical miles. "A minute later the aircraft disappeared from the air traffic control radar," she said.
The plane, built in 1990, was delivered to Dana in February 2009, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. It was previously operated by Alaska Airlines.
President Goodluck Jonathan visited the crash site today after yesterday declaring three days of national mourning and ordering a full investigation.
Investigations Begin
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigators are helping the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority to probe the cause of the crash, Dana said today in a statement on its website.
"We don't know what went wrong," Usidamen said. "The NCAA, the body charged with responsibility with investigating such incidents, has been to the crash site. They have met with officials of the airline to get facts about the flight and investigations are ongoing."
Nigeria's aviation industry, which had one of the world's worst safety records before 2006, worked to improve it after an ADC Airlines plane crashed that year near Abuja, killing 97 people, Harro Ranter, president of the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network, said in a telephone interview from Roosendaal, Netherlands.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administation gave Nigeria a Category 1 rating in August 2010, allowing domestic carriers to fly to the U.S.
Emergency Landing
The aircraft that crashed was forced to carry out an emergency landing in Lagos on April 20, 2010, after it hit a bird on takeoff, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. It also experienced emergencies, including electrical smoke in the cabin, in 2002 and 2006.
A Dana aircraft had to make an emergency landing in Lagos on May 11 after developing hydraulic problems. It wasn't the same plane that crashed yesterday, Usidamen said.
Dana Airlines canceled its flights today, according to a statement on its website.
The airline has been operating since November 2008 in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. The carrier runs 27 flights a day, according to a company press statement in December.
Boeing released a statement extending "profound condolences to the family and friends of those lost in the Dana Airlines crash" and said the Chicago-based company "stands ready to provide technical assistance" in the investigation.
Levi Ajuonuma, a spokesman for the state-owned oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., was on the flight.
Africa had the highest airline accident rate in the world in 2010, accounting for 17 percent of cases, even though it has the world's lowest traffic rate, with only 3 percent of the population traveling by plane, according to the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization.
In Nigeria, 12.5 million passengers flew on domestic and international carriers in 2009, according to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
- San Francisco Cronicle
No comments:
Post a Comment