Serious Plane Crash in Nigeria x 2

[Eric Mc]

It looks like there have been two major accidents involving airliners in Nigeria within the last 24 hours. Firstly, a cargo Boeing 727-200 overan a runway and took out a minibus, killing the ten occupants of the minibus.

Reports are now coming in of a Dana Air MD83 carrying over 150 people which has crashed into a building. It looks like there are no survivors.

[DieselGriff]

Some reports from RD

http://www.rt.com/news/passenger-plane-crash-lagos...

http://www.rt.com/news/cargo-plane-ghanaian-capita...

I hadn't realised the US had awarded Nigeria FAA category 1 status, I thought the West still viewed their safety as dubious at best, obviously can't conclude anything at the moment but was unaware this was the case.

[ATTAK Z]

I was involved in building a couple of airports in Nigeria late seventies early eighties ... been to Murtula Mohammed many times

[TheHeretic]

ATTAK Z said:

I was involved in building a couple of airports in Nigeria late seventies early eighties ... been to Murtula Mohammed many times

I worked out of Calabar. Lagos airport is OK for an African airport, but looking at the state of the country, it is hard to imagine that anything as critical as airports, or air safety are particularly high on their priority lists.

[simonej]

I'm based in Nigeria and have taxied out behind these fellas dozens of times. Very sad (although not exactly surprising).

[simonej]

TheHeretic said:

it is hard to imagine that anything as critical as airports, or air safety are particularly high on their priority lists.

You'd be surprised; there's some massive investment going into the airports and runways, some of them are very good pieces of tarmac. On the other hand the ATC is comical, although amazingly it seems to function well enough!

[Roadrunner23]

Link from BBC news site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18316130

[Dr_Rick]

Actually flew into MM airport in the middle of a power cut, which would have been fine except for the distinct lack of back-up power. Result - no receiving runway visible at night for a 747-200. Cue - captain ramming the throttles to go round again. Scary.

Dr Rick

[jshell]

The capital investment is not really the issue, it's the OPEX. There is a culture of 'breakdown maintenance' and abject fecking laziness in sub-Saharan Africa. If it's running, they don't want to know - whether it's a plane, chopper, boat, car or okada. They only fix broken things and if you wait till a plane breaks, then you've waited too long. I was down in the 'Delta' when a plane load of school children panelled into the ground near PH airport. Just horrible.

The company I worked for had helicopter contracts that were won, on renewal, by a local company. Had it gone through, we were off to buy fast boats to carry out crew-changes rather than risk lives.

Saying that, Aero-contractors and Chiang-chiang were authorised for our use and partclularly Aero was a good airline. Expat maintenance, of course!!

[ATTAK Z]

It's a maintenance thing ... NEPA (Nigerian Electrical Power Authority) does not keep the flow constant and therefore everyone relies on generators. The airports designed and built by NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants) all had no-break systems installed with excellent (usually CAT) diesels cutting in when necessary to sustain airport systems including lighting and VASI ... unfortunately these generators fell to bits very quickly due to lack of maintenance when the airports became operational

Edited by ATTAK Z on Monday 4th June 15:14