By JON GAMBRELL and YINKA IBUKUN
By JON GAMBRELL and YINKA IBUKUN
Associated Press
LAGOS, Nigeria — Engines out, the pilot of the doomed Nigerian commercial airliner looked for somewhere to put down the aircraft, desperate for open space but finding only a sea of tin roofs and narrow dirt roads. Down below, people quietly rejoiced in their homes that erratic state-run electrical service had returned to their crowded neighborhood on the edge of the megacity of Lagos on a hot Sunday afternoon.
The crash on Sunday of the Dana Air flight killed 153 people on board the MD-83 jetliner and an undetermined number of people on the ground. The tragedy struck all of Nigeria’s economic classes, from the state-run oil company executive riding on the plane to the working poor on the ground in the country’s largest city. As investigators continue to probe what caused the crash, many fear another could happen in a country with a long history of aviation disasters that remains completely unprepared for large-scale emergencies.
It’s not just those aboard aircraft who face danger, noted Ezekiel Adekunle, the son of a landlord whose apartment building was damaged in the crash.
“What about those people at home who didn’t board any plane, but the plane came and crashed on them,” he said.
It was the worst air disaster in nearly two decades for Nigeria, a nation where carriers have long used aging aircraft and often operate under little government scrutiny. Some passengers clutch Muslim prayer beads or Bibles, softly praying or loudly calling out “Blood of Jesus” as airplanes hit turbulence. Applause and more prayers punctuate landings.
But flying is the quickest and safest way to move around a nation about twice the size of California with a crumbling network of roads that drivers in rickety buses and trucks speed along and where robbers lay in wait in the night.
Among diplomats and expatriate workers in the oil-rich nation, air travel often becomes a macabre cocktail party discussion, as people swear by one airline or whisper about rumored pending bankruptcies of others. Some of the smaller carriers rely on just one or two aircraft while the largest, Arik Air Ltd., has more than 20 airplanes.