Nigerian 737-200 dissapears, 116 aboard, Lagos....

[FN FAL]

LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian airliner carrying 116 people has gone missing after taking off from Lagos on Saturday, airline officials and media said, but it was not yet clear whether the plane had crashed.

CNN television reported the Federal Airports Authority had confirmed it had gone down shortly after taking off from the commercial capital.

But a public liaison official at the authority told Reuters early on Sunday it had not confirmed the Bellview Airlines Boeing 737-200 had crashed and was still trying to find it.

"It took off at 8:45 and lost contact," a Bellview official told Reuters by telephone, adding that there had been no sightings of the plane since then.

Aviation authorities were trying to locate the aircraft after it lost contact with the control tower minutes after taking off for the capital Abuja.

The privately owned Nigerian airline is popular with expatriates living in the West African nation and Western diplomats feared several their citizens could have been on board.

The airports authority official told Reuters the airliner was carrying 116 people: 110 passengers and six crew. Nigerian media had earlier said there was 114 on board.

 

[KigAir]

Hasn't this been a bad year for 737's?

 

[User546]

First reports said that'd almost half had survived the crash, but looking at the crash scene photos, I find that hard to believe.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/10/23/nigeria.plane/index.html

117 feared dead in Nigeria crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- A Nigerian airliner with 117 passengers and crew on board crashed after takeoff from Lagos, officials said, and it was unclear Sunday if there were any survivors.

The Nigerian Red Cross said were were no signs of survivors so far aboard Bellview Airlines Flight 210, Reuters reported.

"The plane is still burning. I can't confirm if there are any survivors, but there is no trace so far," Red Cross General Secretary Abiodun Orebiyi told Reuters by telephone.

"The plane was totally destroyed," Orebiyi said. "It was scattered everywhere."

Earlier, Oyo state spokesman Abilola Oloko said that "more than half of those on board survived," The Associated Press reported.

But he later said that "the latest reports coming to us say that all the people on the plane died," AP said.

He cited confusion at the crash scene for the conflicting reports.

There also had been conflicting reports about the site of the crash.

The Red Cross told CNN the plane crashed near Lissa, about 30 km (20 miles) north of the commercial capital Lagos. Earlier reports had put the crash site further north in Oyo state.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash or if flight data recorders had been retrieved.

The Boeing 737 disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from the commercial capital Lagos en route to the political capital Abuja Saturday night.

Several high-level Nigerian officials were believed to be on board the privately owned jet, the office of President Olusegun Obasanjo told CNN. They were headed to Abuja for a meeting.

Reuters said the plane was believed to be carrying a U.S. consular official and some European passengers as well.

Human remains and fuselage fragments were scattered across a large area of disturbed earth, according to images of the crash scene broadcast by the local AIT television station, Reuters reported.

A check for 948,000 naira ($7,200) from the evangelical Christian Deeper Life church was one of a number of personal papers found among the wreckage.
A Red Cross official at the site said there was a 70 foot (20 meter) crater where the main impact occurred, Reuters said.

Distress call

The jet left Murtala Muhammed Airport at 7 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) for what should have been a 50-minute flight.

The pilot issued a distress call just before the control tower lost sight of the plane about three minutes after takeoff, officials said.

The twin-engine plane had a capacity of 120 people; Bellview said there were 111 passengers and 6 crew aboard.

Bellview is a Nigerian airline popular with expatriates living in the West African nation and has been operating for about 10 years with no record of any incidents.

A storm was passing through Lagos about the time the flight left, CNN's Jeff Koinange said.

There were widespread rains and thunderstorms around the southwestern corner of Nigeria, particularly near Lagos to Ibadan, CNN's meteorologist Mari Ramos said.

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria said earlier that two helicopters had been scrambled to search for the plane. Relatives of those on board also chartered a helicopter to look for the plane.

The normally bustling airport in Lagos was quiet Sunday with family members of passengers waiting for news of rescue efforts.

President Obasanjo called on the country's people to pray for the passengers and their families, officials said. Obasanjo's office said in a statement that the president was personally overseeing search and rescue operations.
Meanwhile, Obsanjo's wife, Stella Obasanjo, died Sunday at a hospital in Spain, officials said. She had traveled to Spain to undergo surgery and died from complications resulting from that surgery.

 

[falcon20driver]

Hasn't this been a bad year for 737's?

It's been a great year for 737s, thousands of 737 flights everyday in the U.S., I can't remember when the last 737 accident was in the U.S..


Looks like 1998 was the last one that was not associated with pilot error
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=11011998&reg=EI-CJW&airline=Airtran+Airways

 

[C601]

Thank god it was not ADC airlines... I leased them a 737-200, and they have been doing good so far.....

 

['72Gremlin]

This is the 5th Boeing 737 crash this year. All were -200 models except one.

22 Oct 05 Bellview Airlines (117 Dead)
05 Sep 05 Mandala Airlines (102 Dead)
23 Aug 05 TANS (40 Dead)
14 Aug 05 Helios Airways (121 Dead)
03 Feb 05 Kam Air (104 Dead)

http://aviation-safety.net/database/dblist.php?Year=2005

It's been a tough year for the B737, specifically the -200. Very sad... over 480 dead...

People say they're getting old, but 25 years is not that old for an airplane (with good mx, that is).

 

[Swede]

The probability of surviving any crash from altitude seems to be near 0, whereas runway excursions (LIT) seem to produce survivors. Has there ever been a survivor from a high-energy impact type crash? I can't think of any off hand, but I don't dwell on it. Maybe the good folks at airdisaster.com would know.

On second thought, I think a Russian FA survived a plunge from a bombed aeroflot at high altitude because she was in the tail section, which remained relatively intact and impacted on a snowy hillside. Her ride downhill absorbed a lot of the energy.

Truly a sad year for the -200.

 

[millhouse21]

Wasn't there one survivor from that AA 757 that hit the mountain in South America?