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| Another airplane of the Bellview Airlines. (Photo: Xinhua/AFP) | LAGOS, Oct. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- All 117 people, including 111 passengers and six
crew members on board a Nigerian airliner, which crashed shortly after takeoff
from the country's commercial capital Lagos, may have died, officials said on
Sunday.
"Bellview Airlines announces with deep regret the loss involving our
aircraft B737-200A flight number B3210 of Saturday October 22, 2005 with a total
of 117 souls on board," the airlines' chairman Tunde Yusuf told reporters.
"We have now located the accident site at Lissa village, 16 nautical miles
(about 29.6 km) northwest of the Lagos airport," Yusuf said. "We have not been
able to locate any survivor."
Fidelis Onyeyiri, director general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation
Authority, confirmed the news, saying that the plane, lost contact with control
tower shortly after it took off at 8:35 p.m. (1930 GMT) on Saturday en route to
Abuja, the capital.
"An alert was raised and search and rescue efforts commenced immediately,"
Onyeyiri said. "Sadly the aircraft crashed."
"Our preliminary appraisal suggests that the aircraft might have started stalling
after passing flight level 130, lost control, then nosedived into the
ground and created a huge crater into which it disappeared," he said.
"Unfortunately, there appear to be no survivors."
He did not blame the weather on the crash of the plane, which was manufactured in 1981 and still in serviceable condition. "Although there were some clouds are lighting toward the northwest, there were not severe enough to have prevented the successful takeoff of the flight." Enditem |
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