Nigeria’s Accident Investigation Bureau, AIB on Tuesday released preliminary reports on its investigation of two incidents involving aircrafts belonging to Dana Air at Port Harcourt and Abuja airports and the major incident involving a privately chartered Nestor Oil Gulfstream.
Except its description of the circumstances in which the incidents happened, the AIB report was not categorical on the reason for any of the incidents.
It was gathered that the reports may have been released in response to the concern raised by the Senate at its plenary on Tuesday over recent incidents involving airlines at the Nigerian airports.
For instance, on the Dana Air MD-83 aircraft, which took off from Abuja to Port Harcourt, but overshot the runway on landing, Engr. Akin Olateru, the Commissioner of AIB said in the report said that the aircraft was cleared to land by the Air Traffic Control (ATC).
He however said the crew reported that the runway had experienced recent rain before arrival and after touchdown looked and felt contaminated with flood of water that did not drain well.
The aircraft with the registration number 5N-SRI had overran the runway at the Port Harcourt International Airport on February 20,2018, resulting in a major damage to the aircraft.
On the Nestor Oil Gulfstream 200, which occurred on January 25, 2017 at the Abuja Airport, AIB said that before the incident, the departure, cruise and approach to Abuja were uneventful.
Olateru in the report noted that the reported wind by the tower was 070°/07knots and at 1518hours, the aircraft landed slightly left of the runway centre line, “skidding left to right until eventually the aircraft finally swivel on the right shoulder of the runway where it came to a complete stop on a Magnetic Heading of 160o with the right main landing gear strut detached from its main attachment point. All persons on board disembarked unhurt.”
Yet, AIB insisted that there was no reported adverse weather during approach and landing into Abuja and the chartered airplane lost directional control during the landing roll, which led to the veering off of the plane and caused the major incident.
He added: “We are seriously committed to releasing investigation reports on time. This is one way to ensure that such occurrences are prevented from repeating themselves and conform with the purpose of accident investigation.”