Are the people responsible for this (airline directors and because.) would ever be brought to justice? Or are we going to accept it as the work of God and sign that we need more prayer? When CEOs of airlines are negligent about the safety of their passengers then its time they pay the consequences of their negligence. Bellview chairman and their directors should be charge for manslaughter and so should this sosoliso chief officers. Otherwise they will continue to play russian roulette with Nigerian lives.

Now there are reports that the sosoliso aircraft is more than 32 years old and once belonged to the Serbian national airline. According to the report:

"JAT sold the ageing planes to Sosoliso because they could no longer meet most European standards due to loud noise levels produced by the jet's two engines.

JAT spokesperson Zeljka Stojanovic said the DC-9 that crashed had been delivered to JAT by McDonnell Douglas in February 1973 and had served with the former Yugoslav Airlines for 27 years.

JAT mechanics who had maintained Sosoliso's aircraft for several years in Nigeria finally left that country in 2004, she said. "Now, the DC-9s are all theirs," she said."

Please read the link http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=qw1134401042730B252

Accidents can happen but they are preventable too.

To think that there are couples in the plane just like the other one but the most painful, most horrific of all is that kids, two, three of the same parents died in a single day... that just leaves a gnawing pain in my heart.

Hello Peeps,

In my own view, 70% of deaths in Nigeria are preventable. We just get overtly spiritual about things. This thingy could have happened to anyone. It reminds me of a flight to Jos I had that was meant to last an hour.. We ended up shouting Jesus Jesus for almost 75mins. The EAS flight was obviously faulty on that day. But what happened few minutes after touch down.... The pilot was back flying back again to Lagos with the same... bad plane.Haba!!

My regret is that Nigerians are losing their sense of humanity. I was listening to the radio today.... and it was business as usual. No remorse that the Nation ended the destiny of over 100 persons through carelessness. With the regular ocurrence that tragedies occur in this country: I fear that we might get so insulated that we couldn't be less bothered even for greater tragedies.

Now all these gists of Obj doing meeting with some stakeholders is total crap. 100 died 6weeks ago.. nothing was done .. In fact they said that we are not entitled to know the outcome of the investigation. Why should everything be shrouded in secrecy for God's sake? Now they waited for another 70 18yr old kids to die before calling for a meeting. If we truly live in a sane environment, we should have heard of some resignations. But then that is alien to our corporate culture... You stay in govt n die dia.

A nation that places no value on the value of life end's up either frustrating it or killing it unknowingly.It's Pastor Bimbo today ... it could very well be anybody tomorrow....

May God force our leaders to see in this light!!

This is a time for us to major on d major and minor on d minor. Pastor Bimbo has gone to be with God,let us celebrate her life and live ours prayerfully and watchfully.

first of all i want to condemn the attitude of nigerians that God gives and he takes back. This is a very wicked deception to explain away our gross inefficiency as a people.

Facts have now emerged on what transpired with regards to the ill fated sosoliso flight 01145 to port harcourt.

The plane was old and had experienced difficulty in landing at the Abuja Airport on its immediate previous flight. A passenger on that flight confirmed in a national interview relayed on NTA Newsline, that they had to hover round the entire city of Abuja at Low altitude for a very long time before they were able to land.

There was no bad weather in the airport, neither did lightning strike the aircraft contrary to initial reports. Video footage of the debris reveals that the plane hit the ground while trying to land and broke into two thereafter a fire developed which burned all the passenger except one very sharp Nigeria man who jumped out of the plane as soon as it broke into two. He is the only one with the hope of surviving as he sustained fracture but without burns. The other two in critical condition sustained serious burns and will only survive by the divine intervention of the almighty.

The fire fighters at the airport who arrived the scene almost immediately after the crash had no water. The distance from the airport to the main town is far hence the inability of the fire fighters of such multinationals as Royal dutch shell, Mobil and others to respond immediately to the distress call of the airport. By the time they got to the scene the damage had been done.

I want to suggest that the management of sosoliso be arrested by the EFCC and prosecuted for crimes against humanity for using a bad plane to carry our citizens.

I also will advice anybody coming to nigeria not to enter any of our domestic airplanes until such a time in the future when foreign people establish local airlines as we are in the habit of cutting corners. Please use land transport to your destinations in the day time and utilize our financial institutions like banks to transfer your foreign currencies.

I am so sad that because this whole thing could have been averted by using a good plane, grounding the plane in Abuja on realization that it was no longer fit for use or by having water in our fire fighters.

O MY GOD, what a waste of our future, what a tragedy.

The fire fighters at the airport who arrived the scene almost immediately after the crash had no water

Imagine!!!!. Why did they arrive at the scene inthe first place- to watch film? So after previous incidence, them still never learn. Fire fighters without ordinary water? I tire o.

Anyway the  black box has gone to london to detectthe actual courseof  the accident not speculations deduced from extra-incidental sources.

Hi guys,

Thanks for all our contributions.i hope to see a better Nigeria.
In my humble opinion, i think we would be doing more if we could speak out against all ills in our society.
The average Nigerian does not talk. we are already trained for "suffering and smiling". Suffering and smiling. That is what our mentality affords. That is what our culture embraces.
If this happened in the UK or in the States, now, we would have started seeing resignation letters. I mean people resigning of their volition, because they know that they have failed in their responsibilities. But here we are in this country, 3 air crashes- all fatal and two near misses all in 2 months. This is totally ridiculous.

I do not want to belong to a generation who know what is right but prefer to keep quiet. I do not want to belong to a generation who will not speak up. If this happened in the US, activity groups that would not rest until Sosoliso is charged with manslaughter, would have been set up, but here we are in this country, things happen and nobody talks because it wasnt you or I that it happened to.

The guys who flew on that plane to Abuja before it took off to PH on that fateful day should have complained, maybe half of the lifes lost would have been saved. But everybody kept quiet only for someone to now come out on TV saying that they had an ordeal when the plane was coming to ABJ before it took off to PH. That is a typical Nigerian mentality- nobody talks until fatalities happen. We should be posting our comments on the Guardian website.

May God help us all.

...and this IDIOT called Olusegun Aremu OBASANJO will never do anything until situation becomes fatal. Goverment elsewhere are proactive but here , always reactive.

The barbeach will soon wipe away V/ISLAND. They wont do a thing about that until it happens.

Poor Souls are beign sent out of goverment houses and the houses sold to the rich whereas the senate president is living in Nicon hilton hotel and spendin 72Million naira annually (when he's got lot of houses of his own to live in)

Why are these leaders so wicked?

BUNCH OF IDIOTS

Why call the president an Idiot? |Since when does a tree make a forest? Is he the only one responsible for where nigeria is?
What about all those who have been in the aviation system for years and continue to make money in a crooked manner at the expense of others. Our problem is one of Avarice and lack of compassion. The airline operators have no regard for the lives of their own people. Money is what drives nigeria and so in all spheres we have a country that does not work and a people who are so corrupt that now it seems ironic that we dont want to accept that most of the people dragging nigeria down are our own kin. Who has relations in the aviation industry who condone this situation? or friends who win contracts to supply equipment which doesn't work? the proprietors of Sosoliso bellview and the other airlines who conspire against their people to bring flying molues into nigeria as airplanes? People should vent their anger on those people. maybe if some of them are treated like the scum they are then things will change.
These are people common nigerians know so why are we all waiting for the government in abuja.

What is the work of goverment if i may ask? Who is suppose to initiate and empower regulatory bodies to make sure these scenerios (conspiration stuffs) do not happen?

Other countries are have corrupt officials as well but they have policies in place that checkmates activities of the fraudulent people. here, they never enforce these policies. They are used to reactionary measures. Why do we have a goverment if useless things like this keeps happening.

After like 5 incidences (3 fatal ones), the fire fighters at the PH aiport still nor get common water to fight the fire.

If nothing seems to be working in this country and we keep saying its you& I- WHAT THEN IS THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT? Why do we pay taxes> Abi na only NIGERIA corrupt?

I think we ought to thank God. In Congo, they've had up to 7 plane crashes in this year alone!

We are not Congo. Thank God ke when it could have been averted? Plane crashes are caused either by ommission or commision. Its not a natural disaster.

Even the so called lightning strike do not usually cause crashes in developed countries because they use good planes with lightning protectors (insulation). This is an improvement over the lightning conductors in homes which are earthed.

Ma people...

It's with a very heavy heart that i write in response to your numerous comments on the recent spate of air disasters. Enough has been said really...

I think a number of critical issues need to be urgently addressed. Recent events in the aviation sector are neither isolated nor insulated from other segments of our national life. Why have we sacrificed merit on the altar of mediocrity? Why have we enthroned nepotism to the level of national policy (giving it the grandiose tag of "federal character"? So many questions indeed. We ask why we are going to play in Group 'X' in the world cup? We ask why we have to conduct post-UME test for students after the legally empowered JAMB tests... We ask why we there is an apparent loss of quality in the kind of products we churn out of our Ivory towers in hordes and droves... We ask why there is little or no local content w.r.t. our recent and surprisingly good economic growth indices, be it in the real or imaginay sectors of the economy... We ask why we have to endure the brigandage of a heartless and utterly malevolent ruling elite, bent on raping us of our right to decent living... We ask what hope there is for the young and young at heart... We ask... We ask...

Sorrow, tears and blood... in the words of that great musician Fela, thoroughly encapsulates and aptly describes the cyclic redundancy of our individual and collective existence. What begs these questions, in my opinion, as to why we are the way we are as a people is, in all sincerity, already obvious. What we need to do is to put away this regime of "federal character and regional zoning" w.r.t. appointments, admissions, thought leadership, knowledge management, corporate and public governance etc. We need to redefine our identity, believe in this common identity, completely and collectively commit to this singular vision... and wholeheartedly at that, work like there is no God and Pray like we can't work, profess only positive things of the nation and even when things don't look that way, still confess the positive BY FAITH...

Nigeria will not change over night, neither will it evolve into the object of our dreams in a few short years. It may do so when our children become men and women but It will get there. I believe in us. Already, we have begun to crawl our way out of the abyss... there are little sparks of fire albeit few and far between. Donald Duke is to me an epitome of that change mechanism. We need more of such change drivers... from the El-rufai's to Dora Akunyili's, Soludo's to Okonjo-Iweala's, Madam Due-process et al are other such change drivers. Our value system must change as well... from our homes to our communities, we must begin to preach the gospel of sow now, reap later. We were the future of this country some years back... now it's our time. May we find in ourselves the strength and courage to inculcate the values of excellence, leadership, teamwork, integrity, courage etc into our children when indeed they begin to come. May our homes be the centres of excellence required to initiate the drive for a change in our value system...

After all said, may we muster the courage to take the kind of drastic steps required to expunge all forms of incompetence and mediocrity from our national life. The key lies with each one of us... the greatest obstacle to our progress is us. If we can conquer self, we have conquered all.

God bless Nigeria and God bless us ALL.

Amen.

I think we ought to thank God. In Congo, they've had up to 7 plane crashes in this year alone!

We should thank God that instead of 7 plane crashes he'd only allowed 3 with combined death toll of about 300. How magnanimous!

Very sad story.
These kind of accidents will continue to happen as long as we continue to have this 'it is God's will', "God gives,God takes,", in all things Give glory to God".

Can somebody tell me how a plane that almost crashed in its immediate previous flight was allowed to take off with such a non chalent attitude about its condition? Maybe God denied the plane maintenance so that the people will die? If this crash were to happen in the west, so many heads will roll, but in Nigeria we will say 'it is God's will, pray 4 the aviation industry, and then we keep praying till the next time another plane crashes and we repeat the same it was God's will till still another plane crashes.
Its time to stand up and act fellows. By proper maintenance we can cut the air disasters 6 fold.

Its sad, the families are fighting over corpses:
http://www.punchng.com/main/article02

why should we be comparing ourselves with congo? what a shame? the people in the aviation authority insult us by their lame excuses. I now hear that there was no electricity in the airport until about 5 mins after the crash. The grounding of the old airplanes of sosoliso and chanchiangi by the president indefinitely is not enough. He should ask the nigerian airforce to immediately destroy those old relics so that they do nobody else any harm. He should also sack the aviation minister because he has failed this nation time after time.

Nigerians cannot talk when oppressed because nothing will come out of it. We prefer to suffer and smile in the midst of sorrow, tears and blood. We also enjoy deceiving ourselves which is why the golden govenor will say rescue operations went smoothly. Can you imagine? the governor was in abuja when the plane crashed and he left there and landed in port harcourt about two hours to meet the burnt survivors still on their way to various hospitals in the metropolis. He now says in an act of God. Am so embarrased by our wickedness, How can it be an act of God abi is it a way of referring to the devil. This madness of calling God recklessly has to stop.

The weather does not kill, attitude does.

The fatal crash of Sosoliso was not the fault of the weather, the weather was merely a contributory factor. The blame lies solely on the captain who has the exclusive right of decision on whether to land or not to land.

Aviation regulations say that the captain, not air traffic control, nor management or any other party shall make decision with respect to the safe conduct of a flight. The Captain decides if the aircraft is safe to fly, if the weather permits take offs and if he should complete a landing at a specific airport or divert to another. The reason is that the fate of the passengers lies in his/her hands and he controls the vehicle at least for now, until we have airplanes that fly themselves.

In the Sosoliso tragedy, while we await the actual cause of the accident to be analyzed from the cockpit voice recorder and black box, we can at least make some deductions. There was no reported distress call so nothing to indicate that the aircraft was malfunctioning. The weather was reported to be bad, even the statement of one of the parents on the way to airport indicated this. As a result, we have to look at the possibility that the pilot made a decision to land the aircraft in bad weather, having tried a number of earlier times to make the approach and landing.

Now this is where my issue of attitude comes in. Every aircraft operating commercially, that is (carrying paying passengers) must carry enough fuel to get to its destination or on the alternate to divert to an alternate airport up to 45 minutes away. This pilot despite the reported bad weather chose to land at Port Harcourt airport when others had aborted their landing there. The end result is recent history.

I have flown numerous times within Nigeria and to balance the truth, I wish there was a choice. But the state of the nation’s air travel industry is not the topic. It is attitude. A side note, I predicted to friends that the ADC pilot who crashed in Kano will someday crash because I had flown in his aircraft a number of times.

I recently did a lecture on Security in Nigeria and on the issue of identification; I asked the participants to hand over their driver’s licenses. Eighty percent of the licenses I collected were fake. The holders of the license had never even visited the states where their driver’s licenses had been issued. At least they should have gone to the licensing offices to complete the form and take a picture to collect the license, let’s forget for the now the issue of taking a driving test. If any of those people had an accident and a claim was filed against them, how would they defend their driving record? I wonder how many bus drivers carrying millions of people daily actually have a driver’s license. Again attitude!

Is it attitude that says an airplane in need of critical service can wait until the last flight at night to get fixed? Is it attitude that says that there are passengers to continue the flight from Port Harcourt to Enugu so we have to land in Port Harcourt? Is it attitude that says that Third Mainland Bridge has not fallen down so it can wait on maintenance? Is it attitude that says that the educations system is not yet in need of a fix?

Do I need to go on? I think that it is time to analyze our sense of priorities; Nigeria does not fly the oldest aircraft in the world. I for one used to fly a 45 year old airplane but the critical parts were new and/or regularly serviced and when the weather was bad and I had flown to a destination far from home, I would rent a car and drive myself home.

By the way I decided to go City Hall to renew my own license. The genuine license was cheaper to renew than the fake sold outside.

This just in.


ABUJA (AFP) - An angry President Olusegun Obasanjo took action to halt a series of plane crashes, grounding two private airlines and ordering that every plane in Nigeria's civil fleet be inspected within a week.

Three Nigerian planes have crashed within the last two months, killing a total of 226 people and further undermining confidence in a ramshackle aviation industry plagued by corruption, incompetence and under-investment.

Following Saturday's latest disaster, when a DC-9 airliner ploughed into the runway at Port Harcourt airport and burst into flames, Obasanjo called an emergency meeting of aviation officials and airline executives.

....the airlines "Sosoliso and Chanchangi will be grounded with immediate effect, until the inspections have been carried out," he said, adding that two foreign experts had been invited to "ensure the integrity of inspections".

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051213/wl_afp/nigeriaairaccident_051213184914

finally some action(even though late)but something at least. All airlines should be grounded for inspection of their aircrafts and landings. Something has to be done.

As the nation awaits official clues to the cause of Saturday’s crash of the Sosoliso DC-9 aircraft in which 107 people died, investigation on Monday revealed that the ill-fated plane was 32 years old.

A South African newspaper, Independent, quoted sources at JAT Airways, the Serbian national airline, which once owned the plane, as having confirmed the age of the plane.

As at the time the plane went down, it still had the Serbian registration Code–YU-AJH–which it had used for several years on its tail.

A spokesperson for JAT, Zeljka Stojanovic, told Independent that the DC-9 had been sold to the Serbian national airline in February 1973 by its builders, McDonnell Douglas, and it had served the company for 27 years before it was sold to Sosoliso in 2000.

She said, “JAT sold the ageing planes to Sosoliso because they could no longer meet most European standards due to loud noise levels produced by the jet’s two engines,” the report said.

The official, who spoke to Independent on Monday, said Sosoliso bought the aircraft and three other DC-9s in 2000.

The spokesperson said JAT pilots who flew some of Sosoliso’s planes and engineers who worked on them had complained about “poor safety and air control standards” in Nigeria.

“JAT’s pilots also flew for the Nigerian carrier until 2003,” she added.

Sosoliso, which was established in 1994, began domestic flights in July 2000. It had a technical partnership with JAT Airways but JAT mechanics that maintained their planes left in 2004.

Stojanovic said the DC-9s were now handled by Nigerians.

“Now, the DC-9s are all theirs,” she said.

This president's action is a fire brigade way of doing things. Fine, he has grounded two airlines, how save are the others? Besides, what makes it his duty to dish out punishment when he has an Aviation Minister? Does that mean the learned Professor, ( the aviation minister) is not competent? Remember this spectacled Professor did not pass the senate screening the first time he was presented. He was forced on the nation by the president.

The management of the airports and aviation industry in general is shameful. Checkout the local terminal at the Lagos airport; it is a glorified Car park with the "agberos" hustling for customers. This gives a clue to how the airlines are maintained. This is a mirror of how affairs in Nigeria is run- no organization, no format, absolutely chaotic and free for all.

There are aviation committees in the senate and federal house of assembly, what have they been doing? What bills have they passed to secure safety in the airspace?

Yet some are quick to mention God and says “it’s the will of God” when stuff like this happens. Only sickened and apathetic minds will come up with such conclusions.

Pendelite says many Nigerians buy fake driver licenses. I wonder why? To avoid getting tested on the roads? When accidents happen we are quick to cry and point fingers.

The salvation of Nigeria is in the hands of Nigerians, you and me. Simple.

This is the country we love and belong to and it is ill treating us...it could have been any of us...our leaders and fathers are killing us.....i am short of words to express myself.

R.I.P dear departed ones.

I watched my child roast to death - Father of victim laments

Looking at the charred remains of the Sosoliso plane and perhaps with images of the ill-fated plane bursting into flames still emitting horrors in his mind, a father Mr. Isaac Okemini,  who had gone to pick his daughter returning from school said the most painful aspect of the tragedy was that he watched his daughter burn like a goat.


Mrs Ilabor whose three children died in the crash prayed God to “cause a revolution in Nigeria” while Mrs C. Ezue whose husband also died in the crash cried: “I want my husband. Give me my husband, Sosoliso.”


"We watched it happen. It was terrible. We just watched our children burning without being able to help," said Ngozi Ugochukwu, who lost her 13-year-old son in the crash, is quoted by Reuters as saying.

Resign now, Okosuns tells Aviation Minister

Evangelist Sonny Okosuns of the House of Prayers Ministry has called on the Minister of Aviation, Professor Babalola Aborisade, to resign with immediate effect.



[url=http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2005/dec/14/national%20-14-12-2005-008.htm]Senate wants Aviation Minister fired[/url]

The Senate Monday passed a motion asking President Olusegun Obasanjo to sack the Minister of Aviation, Dr. Babalola Borisade over the incessant incidents of plane crashes in Nigeria.



Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered a major shake-up of the aviation sector after Saturday's plane crash that killed over 100 people.

He has grounded two airlines and said all aircraft flying in Nigeria would undergo safety checks within a week.
Mr Obasanjo also said corruption had tainted the sector, causing deaths. He had earlier angrily criticised aviation officials live on television.
He grounded the entire Sosoliso fleet, along with that of another airline, Chanchangi, with immediate effect... He has also sacked the permanent secretary in the aviation ministry, Tommy Oyelade, and another senior official... The Nigerian Bar Association has called for the immediate sack of the aviation minister and have offered a free legal service to families of the victims of Saturday's crash.

Babalola Borisade is never an aviation expert, i wonder how he will be able to cope in that capacity (as minister of aviation). When people place political affiliation above qualifications we are bound to end p putting squre pegs in round holes.

What can anyone do within 6 months of assuming office? The present Aviation Minister was appointed in May 2005 or there about. The way Nigerian bureaucracy is and organized, you can't do much with this time period, that is what all of people don't realize.

Besides, the aviation sector has suffered decades of neglect and disinvestment that can't be turned around in just 6 months!

What can anyone do within 6 months of assuming office? The present Aviation Minister was appointed in May 2005 or there about. The way Nigerian bureaucracy is and organized, you can't do much with this time period, that is what all of people don't realize.

Besides, the aviation sector has suffered decades of neglect and disinvestment that can't be turned around in just 6 months!

So what has he done since assuming office.

u see dem ILABOR ppl (i boy n 2 girls)..they were ma neighbours in PH. i really feel really sorry for their parents. ive been crying since. they r the only children their parents had and the doc told the mom not to get pregnant again cos she had prob givin birth 2 d last 1. so no kids. GODDDDDDDDDD where art thou! innocent children looking forward to unwrapping christmas pressies dis yr!

joftech:

So what has he done since assuming office.

I can't speak to what he has or has not done. BUt I would not expect much given the redundancy of the civil service.

The Permant Secs. and directors as career civil servants know the ins and outs of their ministries. They are the experts, but unfortunately they are the most corrupt. The Ministers most times are just figure heads, a mouth pieces and a political figures. They know only what the directors or perm sec wants them to know. The ministers can't do  anything or fire anyone without getting approval from the president. They depend on the Perm secs. and directors to get their job done.

If I have my way, I would have sacked the majority of them long ago.

I seen this on CNN, I thought about you all and your family, friends and love ones.

My sympathy goes out to all, this is a tragedy. May we all be rightly guided.
Sorry I didn't find this thread sooner,

Be well

My second cousin was involve in the ill fated sosoliso plane.she was the only chind of her parents.