Chanchangi Airlines

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Chanchangi

IATA 3U	ICAO NCH	Callsign CHANCHANGI
Founded		1994
Hubs		Murtala Mohammed International Airport
Focus cities		Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Port Harcourt International Airport, Kaduna Airport
Frequent flyer program		none
Member lounge		none
Alliance		none
Fleet size		10
Destinations		4
Parent company		Chanchangi Airlines Nig. Ltd.
Headquarters		Kaduna, Nigeria
Key people		Alhaji Chanchangi (Chairman)
Website: http://www.chanchangi-airlines.com

Chanchangi Airlines is a privately owned and operated airline with the head office in Kaduna in Nigeria. It operates domestic passenger services.

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

[edit] History

The airline was established on 5 January 1994 by Alhaji Chanchangi and started flight operations to and from Kaduna, Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt on 2 May 1997. Services were operated using Boeing 727-200 aircraft and 2 Boeing 737-200 aircraft were also acquired in 2004.

Chanchangi Airlines won the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Corporate Merit Award for “Best Domestic Airline of the Year” for 1998, 1999 and 2000.

[edit] Incidents and accidents

One of Chanchangi Airlines Boeing 727s crash landed (with a landing gear problem) at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos on 29 December 2004 after a flight from Port Harcourt. The 81 people on board were uninjured and there was no major damage to the plane. As a result the remaining 5 Boeing 727s were grounded to enable investigators to carry out in depth inspections on the aircraft. On 3 January 2005 the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) permitted the resumption of full flight operations.

Following the crash of Sosoliso Airlines flight 1145 on December 10, 2005, President Olusegun Obasanjo grounded both Sosoliso and Chanchangi Airlines. Chanchangi's grounding was based on a report that its operations were unsafe. [1] After passing inspections by Nigeria's aviation ministry, Chanchangi was allowed to resume operations on December 22, 2005. [2]

A Boeing 727 en route to Abuja was forced to return to Lagos on May 9 after the crew reported a problem with the aircraft's air conditioning system.

On August 22, 2006, two tyres burst on a Boeing 727 with 98 passengers on board. The pilot reportedly made a hard landing to grip with the wet runway after a heavy rain at at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. There were no casualties.

[edit] Services

Currently scheduled services are domestic only as follows (at February 2005):

Abuja to Lagos
Kaduna to Lagos
Lagos to Abuja, Kaduna and Port Harcourt
Port Harcourt to Lagos

In August 2004 the airline secured international routes to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. These were to start in October 2004 but do not appear to have done so.