Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145

Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145
Accident summary
Date 10 December 2005 (2005-12-10)
Summary Pilot error
Site Port Harcourt International Airport, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Passengers 103
Crew 7
Injuries (non-fatal) 2
Fatalities 108
Survivors 2
Aircraft type McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32[1]
Operator Sosoliso Airlines
Registration YU-AJH
Flight origin Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, Nigeria
Destination Port Harcourt International Airport, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
A similar aircraft, a DC 9-30, from Sosoliso Airlines at Enugu Airport
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Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145 was a scheduled flight between the Nigerian cities of Abuja (ABV) and Port Harcourt (PHC). At about 14:08 local time (13:08 UTC) on 10 December 2005, Flight 1145 from Abuja crash-landed at Port Harcourt International Airport. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 with 110 people on board, burst into flames. Immediately after the crash, seven survivors were recovered and taken to hospitals, but it has since been reported that four of those survivors have died in hospital care, leaving three survivors, two of whom were flown to South Africa. In the end, two people survived.[2]

The flight

The captain was Benjamin Adekunle Adebayo, a Nigerian. The first officer was Gerad Yakubu Andan, a Ghanaian.[3]

The crashed DC-9 was owned by JAT Airways, and operated by Sosoliso Airlines Ltd.[4] This is the first accident for the airline.

The accident occurred during approach to Port Harcourt in adverse weather - windshear, rain and lightning. Unable to make out the unlit runway through the rain, the captain called for a go around (missed approach) at an altitude of about 200 ft (approximately 120 ft above the ground). This call was made about 100 ft below the "decision altitude". The missed approach procedure was carried out incorrectly, and the aircraft struck the ground approximately 70 meters left of the runway. It collided heavily with a concrete drainage culvert, disintegrated and caught fire.[5]

Many passengers survived the initial impact and died in the resulting fire. Port Harcourt Airport had one fire truck and no ambulances.[6]

Victims

All seven crew members and 101 of the 103 passengers died in the crash, or later from their injuries. The two surviving passengers were seriously injured.[7]

Among the passengers were about sixty-one secondary school students from Loyola Jesuit College in the Federal Capital Territory region of Nigeria.[8] At first Loyola Jesuit College students from Port Harcourt traveled between school and their homes via buses using the roads. Rising crime along roads during the 1990s made parents believe that road travel was too dangerous. In 2001, when Sosoliso Airlines began services between Port Harcourt and Abuja parents placed their children on the flights.[2]

Among the victims were two volunteers for Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders en route to work in Port Harcourt, Hawah Kamara and Thomas Lamy, as well as televangelist Bimbo Odukoya, pastor of the Fountain of Life Church, who succumbed to her injuries the day after the accident.[9][10]

One survivor, Kechi Okwuchi, was treated in Milpark Hospital at Johannesburg, South Africa as of 14 December 2005 [11] and at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Galveston, Texas, United States as of 6 September 2007.[12]

Legacy

Andy and Ify Ilabor, the parents of crash victims Chuka, Nkem, and Busonma "Buso" Ilabor, started a foundation called the Ilabor Angels to assist orphans and AIDS victims.[6]

Loyola Jesuit dedicated a Memorial Hall to the deceased students.[6]

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandates that each family of an air crash victim is entitled to only 3 million naira or US$18,157 from the airline. In January 2009 Harold Demuren, the director general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), said that the families of the air crash victims would be compensated and that Sosoliso had already paid $2.3 million into an escrow account to compensate the families.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
  2. 1 2 "Nightmare in Nigeria: How Blunders and Neglect Stoked an African Air Tragedy". The Wall Street Journal. 1 October 2007. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007. Retrieved 10 January 2009. - Available from ProQuest, document ID: 399047247
  3. ↑ Nigerian Federal Ministry of Aviation's Investigation Report FMA AIPB 424: DC93 LOC Port Harcourt 2005. 5 (5/45). Retrieved on 8 September 2010.
  4. ↑ Nigerian Federal Ministry of Aviation's Investigation Report FMA AIPB 424: DC93 LOC Port Harcourt 2005. 4/45. Retrieved on 8 September 2010.
  5. ↑ Investigation Report FMA AIPB 424, section 3.1, page 22
  6. 1 2 3 Africa's Airline Casualties on YouTube - The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 17 November 2007.
  7. ↑ Nigerian Federal Ministry of Aviation's Investigation Report FMA AIPB 424: DC93 LOC Port Harcourt 2005. 8 (8/45). Retrieved on 8 September 2010.
  8. ↑ "Nigeria plane crash kills 103." Reuters at Yahoo!. Retrieved on 8 September 2010.
  9. ↑ "Its an Act of God, Says Pastor Bimbo’s Mother," Online Nigeria Daily News
  10. ↑ ""Casualty figure in Nigerian plane crash increases to 107... Pastor Bimbo Odukoya among the dead," Online Nigeria Daily News
  11. ↑ Oni-Olusola, Gbenga. "Crash Survivor in S/African Hospital, Mother Speaks." This Day. 14 December 2005. Retrieved on 23 February 2009.
  12. ↑ "Enter the Den 2007-2008," Loyola Jesuit College
  13. ↑ Kenneth Ehigiator. "Nigeria: ADC Airline Owners Face Arrest." Lagos:AllAfrica.com. 1 January 2009. Retrieved on 10 September 2010.

References

External links

External images
Picture of the aircraft while still flying for Serbian Airline JAT - Registration YU-AJH

Coordinates: 4°47′N 7°00′E / 4.783°N 7.000°E / 4.783; 7.000

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