Grieving relatives and solemn dignitaries gathered to mourn on Thursday at the site where a Nigerian airliner plunged to earth and killed all 177 people on board, as United States aviation experts arrived in to help investigate the mystery crash.
Nigerian agencies have yet to advance any theory as to why Bellview Airlines flight 210 lost contact with air traffic control three minutes after taking off Lagos’ Ikeja airport on Saturday before exploding in a cocoa grove just north of the city.
Group Captain MS Kanwai of the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) told reporters at the ceremony at the crash site that earthmoving equipment would arrive on Friday and the remains of the Boeing 737 jet would be carefully dug out from the crater where came down.
”They’ve cleared a road that’s going to the site. Excavations will start tomorrow [Friday], as part of the investigation,” he said, adding that a four-person team of experts had arrived from the United States to assist in the inquiry.
Earlier, the US embassy in Abuja said that the team would be led by Dennis Jones of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
”The team also includes two members from the Boeing Aircraft Corporation, makers of the Bellview Boeing 737, and a representative of Pratt and Whitney, the makers of the aircraft engines,” an embassy statement said.
”The team will assist in the investigation of the crash along with the Nigerian accident investigation team,” it added.
At the crash site thousands of relatives and well wishers gathered alongside President Olusegun Obasanjo and senior officials for a ceremony of remembrance.
”We want to express on behalf of the government and people of Nigeria, and on my personal behalf, our sympathy and condolences to the families of the 117 people — Nigerians and non-Nigerians — who left Ikeja on that fateful day,” Obasanjo said.
Wreaths were laid around the crater at the centre of the disaster zone and some mourners were overcome with grief.
Victoria Emasuen, the wife of flight 210’s pilot, collapsed to the ground crying: ”My dear, by husband, my dear perished in this place. Allow me to join him. Who will now look to the children?”
Some mourners collected earth from the site in order to rebury it elsewhere in symbolic services for the large number of passengers whose remains were too badly mutilated to be identified.
Nigerian experts have so far been able to offer no explanation as to why the apparently airworthy jet, operated by a private Nigerian airline, should have lost contact with air traffic control three minutes after take-off in a powerful electric storm.
Aviation officials said the 24-year-old airframe had passed a full inspection in February and had been checked again 10 hours before beginning the ill-fated flight.
Some witnesses reported that the plane appeared to explode in mid-air prior to crashing, an idea apparently supported by the widely scattered nature of the wreckage and the absence of an identifiable airframe amid the corpse-strewn wreckage at the crash site.
Nigeria press reports have speculated that the jet may have been struck by lightning or a bird, run out of fuel or been sabotaged prior to take-off in a bid to assassinate senior officials. None of these counts have been confirmed.
Nigeria has a bad record for aviation safety and has suffered similar tragedies in the past, most recently in May 2002 when an airliner ploughed into a crowded suburb of the northern city of Kano and killed at least 115 people on board and scores more on the ground.
But Bellview, the private Nigerian-owned airline that operates flight 210, had a relatively good reputation for safety and was an airline of choice for many west African business travellers. – AFP
