Bad weather, no runway lighting and a poor decision by the crew caused the December crash of a Nigerian plane that killed 106 people, more than half of them children, investigators said.
The DC9 operated by private Nigerian airline Sosoliso crashed, broke into pieces and burst into flames on December 10 as it was trying to land at the international airport at Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil capital in the southern Niger Delta.
The majority of the victims were children on their way home from boarding school for the Christmas break. It was the second major plane crash in Nigeria in seven weeks.
A report by the aviation ministry’s Accident Investigation and Prevention Bureau (AIPB), published in newspapers on Thursday, described a disastrous sequence of events that led to the crash. AIPB Director Angus Ozoka confirmed the details to Reuters.
The report said a thunderstorm was raging as the plane approached Port Harcourt, impairing the pilot’s visibility. Runway lighting that would have helped was not switched on at the time. Then, as the plane was preparing to touch down, the wind suddenly changed speed and direction dramatically.
As a result, the plane hit the ground about 500m from the runway and crashed into an exposed drainage culvert, breaking into pieces. Wreckage was recovered over a distance of 1 120m.
The report criticised the crew for deciding to land the aircraft despite the poor visibility and strong winds.
”The probable cause of the crash was the crew’s decision to continue to approach below the decision altitude without having the runway in sight,” Ozoka told Reuters by telephone.
The report recommended improving the training of Nigerian pilots to recognise and recover from adverse weather conditions including wind shear.
It also said airports and aircraft should be equipped with instruments to detect wind shear.
The report also noted that the control tower at Port Harcourt airport was supposed to control the runway lighting but in fact the system was not working at the time. It recommended simplifying the commands for runway lighting.
Port Harcourt airport was closed down in August for rehabilitation works expected to last several months.
The Sosoliso crash came just seven weeks after another passenger jet, a Boeing operated by private Nigerian carrier Bellview, crashed in the countryside shortly after take-off from Lagos, killing all 117 people on board.
The AIPB has not released a report on the Bellview crash. Ozoka said investigations were still going on but were hampered by the absence of the black box, of any survivors or credible eye witnesses, and by insufficient evidence from the crash site.
The two crashes prompted President Olusegun Obasanjo to launch a raft of reforms in the aviation sector including a new civil aviation bill strengthening safety regulations and several airport rehabilitation projects. Several airlines, including Sosoliso, were temporarily grounded for audits of their fleets. – Reuters