reasons the chartered
Embraer 120 aircraft
carrying the corpse of ex-
Ondo State governor, Chief
Olusegun Agagu, crashed on
Thursday minutes after it
took off from the Murtala
Mohammed Airport in Lagos, enroute Akure.
While officials said the ill-fated aircraft carried only
20 people on board, a reliable aviation source disclosed
on Friday that the plane might have crashed because it
was "overloaded" in some other ways...
The plane had 20 passengers, 13 of which died while
the seven others were left in critical conditions.
The top source, who pleaded not to be named because
of the sensitive nature of the issue, told Nation that at
the time of the crash, the plane had 5-hour endurance
fuel, which constituted 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 expert said: “It is true that the plane is designed
for 30 passengers and there were only 20 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 JUST one engine to carry.
“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
wasn't 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.”
It would be recalled that the propeller aircraft
crashed into the compound of PPMC inside the premises
of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport
around 9.32 am on Thursday. The plane hit the fence
and broke into two before it went up in flames after
about 25 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment