Nigeria grounds Dana Air after crash
Associated Press
The wreckage of the Dana Air plane is seen at the crash site in Lagos. Nigerian officials have suspended the airline’s licence pending an investigation into the crash, which killed 153 people.
Lagos/Abuja – Nigeria’s government has suspended the air licence of Dana Air, two days after 153 people died in the country’s worst airline disaster for 20 years, the aviation ministry said on Tuesday.
Dana Air said the plane had experienced no mechanical faults prior to it crashing into an apartment building in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos on Sunday afternoon.
President Goodluck Jonathan has declared three days of national mourning starting from Monday for the victims.
“The Federal Government has suspended immediately and indefinitely the operational licence of Dana Air for safety precautionary reasons,” Joe Obi, spokesperson for the minister of aviation, said by telephone.
The privately owned Dana Air flight, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, burst into flames on impact, killing everyone on board, as well as at least two people on the ground – a woman clutching her baby.
Nigerian emergency services were still pulling out bodies on Tuesday from the wreckage, their efforts hampered by heavy rains in the densely populated part of the sprawling city.
“There was nothing wrong with the aircraft,” Dana’s director of flight operations Oscar Wilson told local television station Channels TV, adding it had experienced no difficulties
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