Nigeria Airways Flight 2120
| Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 | |
|---|---|
 The crashed Douglas DC-8 at Faro Airport in 1989 |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Loss of control or structural failure due to fire |
| place | Jeddah |
| date | July 11, 1991 |
| Fatalities | 261 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Douglas DC-8-61 |
| operator | Nigeria Airways |
| Mark | C-GMXQ |
| Departure airport | King Abdulaziz International Airport , Jeddah , Saudi Arabia |
| Destination airport | Sadiq Abubakar III International Airport , Sokoto , Nigeria |
| Passengers | 247 |
| crew | 14th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On July 11, 1991, a Douglas DC-8-61 leased from Nationair Canada crashed on Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 while attempting an emergency landing near King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah . The plane had taken off from the same airport ten minutes earlier and caught fire. All 261 inmates were killed in the accident. This crash is the worst accident involving a Douglas DC-8 and the worst accident ever involving a Canadian aircraft.
Plane and crew
In the summer of 1991 Nigeria Airways had rented a Douglas DC-8-61 ( c / n : 45982, s / n : 345, registration : C-GMXQ) from Nationair Canada to use the machine on behalf of various tour operators on Hajj flights from Nigeria to deploy to Jeddah. These temporary pilgrim traffic led Nigeria Airways separated from her regular scheduled operations by. As part of the wet lease , Nationair provided the pilots and cabin crew as well as a mechanic and a project manager who coordinated the charter flights on site and was responsible for adhering to the flight plans .
Lack of maintenance
As early as July 7th, the Canadian mechanic noticed insufficient pressure in several tires during an inspection of the chassis in Nigeria . Due to the tightly staggered deployment planning, however, the wheels were not replaced or the tires were filled. The investigation committee later found out that the tire pressures originally entered in the maintenance log had subsequently been overwritten with higher values. In this condition, the aircraft made seven more flights and arrived in Jeddah on July 10 at 2 p.m. local time with a Nigerian pilgrimage group. A return flight to Sokoto was planned for the same evening, but had to be rescheduled for the next morning due to delays in passenger handling.
Before the morning departure from Jeddah, the mechanic tried to organize the nitrogen needed to inflate the tires . This was only available in the Saudi Arabian Airlines shipyard , which was located in a different part of the airport. The procurement of the nitrogen would have led to a further delay in the already delayed departure, so that the responsible project manager gave the instruction to refrain from filling. The pilots were believed not to have been briefed on the condition of the aircraft. On the way from the terminal to the runway , the machine covered a distance of around five kilometers, which caused the tires to heat up considerably before take-off.
the accident
At 08:28 local time, the crew initiated the take-off procedure on runway 34L. While the machine was accelerating, the two front tires on the left main landing gear burst one after the other at speeds of 50 and 90 knots (93 and 166 km / h). At least one of the wheels was blocked by debris. When the tires lying next to each other burst, the front rims and the chassis beam came into contact with the ground. As a result of the friction, the metal heated up extremely and ignited the adhering pieces of tire. Although the crew had registered the tire burst, they did not abort the starting process. Their procedure corresponded to the specifications of Nationair Canada , which had instructed its pilots in-house to continue the take-off in the event of a tire damage. Witnesses observed how the machine pulled a plume of smoke after it took off, which remained visible until the landing gear was retracted.
The Douglas DC-8 had no fire alarm in the landing gear shafts, so that the fire initially went unnoticed after the undercarriage was retracted. Shortly after take-off, the fire destroyed the electrical lines running in the shaft, which triggered a series of (false) warning messages in the cockpit. The first warning related to a cabin pressure problem . The crew informed the air traffic controller of this and asked to be allowed to maintain an altitude of 2000 feet (610 meters) until the situation was clarified. The captain mistakenly used the callsign Nationair 2120 instead of Nigeria Airways 2120 .
This led to a mix-up: because immediately beforehand a plane had reported an identical problem to the national airline Saudia Arabian Airlines , the controller related the radio message to the Saudi aircraft. The pilot instructed the pilots to descend to 3,000 feet (914 meters). The Canadian crew, who were still below this altitude, were irritated by the instruction, but continued the climb accordingly and asked to be allowed to return to the airport. The Douglas DC-8 then turned into a left traffic pattern . The controller also incorrectly referred to the messages from the Canadian pilots over the next three minutes to the Saudi aircraft because they were made without a call sign. As a result, the traffic pattern was extended further south than necessary.
In the meantime, the fire in the landing gear shaft had destroyed the hydraulic lines running there , whereupon the ailerons failed. This meant that the machine could only be controlled to a limited extent. The flammable hydraulic fluids intensified the fire, which then spread below the cabin floor and jumped over to the right landing gear shaft. At the same time, an unidentified crew member informed the pilots about smoke in the cabin ( "... smoke in the back, real bad" or in German "... there is smoke in the back , really bad" ). At 08:33, the fire destroyed the connections to the flight data recorder , which meant that it was only possible to reconstruct further events on board to a limited extent. Because of the control problems and the smoke development, the crew made another emergency call, which the pilot assigned correctly this time. The controller instructed Nigeria Airways 2120 to turn to an 80 degrees east heading which put the aircraft in position for final approach .
Despite the loss of the ailerons, the crew managed to align the machine in the direction of the three available runways. Shortly afterwards the landing gear was extended. The sudden supply of oxygen intensified the fire, so that the cabin floor collapsed over the open landing gear shafts and several passengers fell out of the plane. The first bodies were found 18 kilometers from the airport. The fire penetrated the passenger cabin through the opening and spread suddenly from the incoming airstream . This led to the collapse of further sections of the floor and probably also to damage to the central tank. Immediately afterwards, at 08:36, the crew reported by radio that the passenger cabin was on fire ( “We are on fire!” ). The aircraft then headed for the left runway (34L). Because the course obviously could not be maintained, the pilots decided to land on the middle runway (34C). Witnesses watched the DC-8's nose suddenly sag on its final approach. At 0838, the machine hit about 2,875 meters from the runway at a speed of about 440 km / h and exploded. There were no survivors. The commission of inquiry assumed that the pilots had lost control of the aircraft shortly before landing, although structural failure of the fuselage as a result of the damage could not be ruled out.
Similar cases
- Mexicana flight 940 , on which a Boeing 727 also crashed in fire due to a burst tire.
filming
The accident was filmed in the series Mayday - Alarm im Cockpit .
Individual evidence
- ^ Accident report DC-8-61 C-GMXQ , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on October 14, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Tire Failure on Takeoff Sets Stage for Fatal Inflight Fire and Crash, Flight Safety Foundation, September 1993
- ^ Aviation catastrophes , David Gero, Stuttgart 1994