Engine failure caused Dana Air crash

2012-07-13 08:23

Scene of the Nigerian air crash.

Lagos - Dual engine failure caused the crash of a Nigerian aircraft that killed at least 159 people last month in the country's largest city of Lagos, a preliminary official report said on Thursday.

The probe into the June 3 Dana Air crash traced the cause "to the loss of two engines and non-functionality of the throttles on final descent from Abuja to Lagos", the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) report said.

All 153 people on board the Dana Air MD83 died when it crashed into a neighbourhood near the airport in Lagos, and at least six people on the ground were killed.

The preliminary AIB report said: "At 15:43:27 hours, the captain informed the FO (flight officer), 'we just lost everything, we lost an engine. I lost both engines'.

"During the next 25 seconds until the end of the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) recording, the flight crew was attempting to restart the engines."

The plane then crashed about 5.8 miles north of Lagos, it said.

The report denied media speculation that contaminated fuel could have affected the two engines.

The AIB will conduct further probes into the crash, the statement said.

- AFP