Facts emerged yesterday on the probable reasons the chartered Embraer
120 aircraft carrying the corpse of former Ondo State governor, Chief
Olusegun Agagu, crashed on Thursday minutes after it took off from the
Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos.
The ill-fated plane reportedly
had 20 passengers, 13 of which died while the seven others were left in
critical conditions. Among the casualties was the Ondo State
Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Mr. Deji Falae, who was said to be
the eldest son of elder statesman and candidate of the AD/APP alliance
in the 1999 presidential election, Chief Olu Falae.
Also dead in
the crash were Mr. Tunji Okusanya, the proprietor of Nigeria’s most
popular casket making/marketing outfit, MIC Funeral Company, his son
Tunji Okusanya Jnr, no fewer than four of his staff, the pilot of the
plane, Captain Yakubu and five others.
While the ill-fated
30-passenger aircraft was said to have only 20 people on board, a
reliable aviation source insisted yesterday that the plane might have
crashed because it was overloaded in some other ways.
The source,
who pleaded not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the
issue, told our correspondent that at the time it crashed, the aircraft
had five-hour endurance fuel, which constituted unnecessary burden on
the plane because it only needed just about a third of that quantity of
fuel for a return trip from Lagos to Akure.
“The aviation expert
said: “It is true that the plane is designed for 30 passengers and there
were only 20 passengers on board, but it was loaded with too much fuel,
and that is professionally wrong.
“The aircraft had five-hour endurance fuel for a return journey that would not take more than one hour.
“Remember
that the aircraft was also carrying a corpse, and you know that the
weight of a corpse is more than that of a living person. This combined
with the weight of the casket and the volume of fuel in the aircraft
probably weighed it down as it approached the air.”
The
foregoing, the source said, was compounded by the fact that the two
engines of the aircraft might not have been in perfect conditions.
Hence, when one of the engines packed up, the weight of the aircraft
became too much for the other.
“As it taxied for take-off, the
pilot probably realised that the plane had lost an engine, but he
believed that he was already at a point that we in the aviation sector
call the “critical point of no return.” If he had aborted the flight at
that point, the impact would have been much more.
“The pilot
probably had to continue to go up or ‘ pull off ‘ in the hope that the
other engine could take the aircraft to a level where it could return to
land and abort the flight. But whereas it is possible to stabilise with
one engine when an aircraft is in the air, it is very dangerous to take
off or land with one engine.”
By the account of the airliners,
the ill-fated aircraft’s last flight was in August while it underwent a
A-check in June, meaning that it did not fly in the whole of September.
The expert said this was probably so because the aircraft , usually used
for chartered services, was not hired during the period, which
underscores the need for vigorous check by ground officers who certified
it fit to be airborne.
The aviation expert also said
communication between the pilot and the traffic controllers at the
airport could not have been possible because the aircraft had not gained
altitude for it to come under aerial radar control
Explaining
the various stages of control before an aircraft is airborne, the source
said: “There are four stages of control. The first stage is on the
ground when the necessary checks are made to certify the aircraft fit.
The second is the tower stage where the control tower declares the
captain free to take off.
“The third is the approach stage where
the control tower monitors the aircraft to see that it stabilises. The
fourth is the radar stage when the plane is airborne and communication
between the pilot and air traffic controllers is possible.
“The aircraft was at the third stage which is ‘approach’ when it crashed on Thursday.”
The
propeller aircraft belonging to Associated Airlines crashed into the
disused compound of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC),
a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) at
the premises of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport around 9.32
am on Thursday minutes after it took off from the local wing of the
airport.
The chartered plane had hit the wall demarcation and broke into two before it went up in flames after about 25 minutes.
culled from
thenationonlineng.net
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