Bellview Airlines (Nigeria)

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Bellview

IATA B3	ICAO BLV	Callsign BELLVIEW AIRLINES
Founded		1992
Hubs		Murtala Mohammed International Airport
Focus cities		Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Port Harcourt International Airport
Frequent flyer program		Premium Club
Member lounge		none
Alliance		none
Fleet size		7
Destinations		15
Parent company		Bellview Airlines Nig. Ltd.
Headquarters		Lagos, Nigeria
Key people		Tunde Yusuf (Chairman), Kayode Odukoya (CEO)
Website: http://www.flybellviewair.com

Bellview Airlines is an airline based in Lagos, Nigeria. It is privately owned and operates domestic, regional and international scheduled passenger services. Its main base is Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos^[1].

1 History
2 Destinations
3 Incidents and accidents
4 Fleet
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

The airline was established and started executive charter operations in 1992 with a Yakovlev Yak-40. It was established as a Lagos travel agency. In 1993 it began scheduled domestic passenger services using a leased Douglas DC-9-30. An affiliate company, Bellview Airlines (Sierra Leone) was established in 1995, but has since been merged back into the parent company. It has 308 employees^[1].

[edit] Destinations

Bellview Airlines operates domestic scheduled services linking Lagos with four cities, as well as regional services to 10 destinations in Central and West Africa. It also operates long-haul services between Lagos and London and Johannesburg^[1].

Bellview Airlines operates the following services (at December 2006)^{[citation needed]}:

Domestic scheduled destinations: Abuja, Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
International scheduled destinations: Abidjan, Accra, Banjul, Conakry, Dakar, Douala, Freetown, Libreville and Monrovia.

[edit] Incidents and accidents

On October 22, 2005, Bellview Airlines Flight 210, a Boeing 737 aircraft with 117 people on board, crashed shortly after taking off from Lagos en route to the Nigerian capital Abuja. ^[2]

Early reports from Oyo state government officials claimed that at least half of those on board survived the crash, but later retracted that statement saying that that “the latest reports coming to us say that all the people on the plane died.” Confusion at the crash site was given as a cause for the mistaken figure. CNN reports that poor weather may have contributed to the crash. The crash inquiry is being aided by officials from Boeing and the United States National Transportation Safety Board. The flight data recorders have not yet been recovered, though pieces of their casing have been found. Angus Ozoka, a Nigerian official leading the crash investigation, said he believes the recorders were destroyed in the impact. Bellview resumed flights on October 24, 2005.

On December 19, 2005, a Bellview flight made an emergency landing at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana. The Boeing 737 was on a flight from Lagos to Freetown, Sierra Leone when crew detetected a hydraulic systems failure. The following day, Nigerian authorities ordered all Bellview flights grounded and revoked Bellview's license. [2] An aviation task force changed the revocation to a suspension on December 22, 2005, giving Bellview the possibility of operating again once their equipment and procedures pass task force inspection. ^[3].