Dana Air Crash Preliminary Report: Engine Failure Likely Cause
Total engine failure is the likely cause reported for the Dana Air Crash in Nigeria
The failure of both engines is the likely cause of the Crash of Dana Air Flight 992 on June 3rd killing all the passengers on board and at least 10 on the ground.
This is the preliminary finding of Nigeria’s Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) that was released last week.
The first sign of trouble started at 3:41 PM local time when the first officer asked the captain…”both engines coming up?”.
The reply from the Captain was negative:
‘At 15:41:16, the first officer (FO) inquired, “both engines coming up?” and the captain (Capt) replied “negative.”
The flight crew subsequently discussed and agreed to declare an emergency. At 1542:10, Dana 992 radioed an emergency distress call indicating “dual engine failure . . . negative response from throttle.”
At 1542:35, the flight crew lowered the flaps further and continued with the approach and discussed landing alternatively on runway 18L.
At 1542:45, the Capt reported the runway in sight and instructed the FO to raise the flaps up and 4 seconds later to raise the landing gear.
At 1543:27 hours, the Capt informed the FO “we just lost everything, we lost an engine. I lost both engines”. During the next 25 seconds until the end of the CVR recording, the flight crew was attempting to restart the engines, the report said.’
The MD-80 plane crashed 5.8 miles north of Lagos according to the report.
The report also stated information regarding the impact:
“…the impact sequence, the Dana plane struck an incomplete building, two trees and three buildings and the wreckage was confined, with the separated tail section and engines located at the beginning of the debris field.”
Testing of fuel samples from the refueling truck were negative for contaminants.
Category: Airnation
To have both engine just quit…you’d have to think there was some sort of fuel issue…maybe a fuel feed problem?
Maybe someone knowledgeable on this could comment here…
The whole voice recorder indicates that the pilots had problems at 15:15, when they noticed problems with their instruments. Specifically, the engine throttle setting to the thrust power indicator.
At 15:22 the descent began, which meant the engines weren’t being asked to do quite much. But once they were in the final landing phases at 15:41:16, the first officer asked “both engines coming up?” meaning was the issue fixing itself? Since the engine power wasn’t responding, they declared an emergency at 15:42:10.
The information on the flight data recorder was completely lost. Although the plane was built in 1990 and had 35,219 cycles, the left engine had 30,933 cycles and the right engine had 12,466 cycles.
I believe i have found something… This incident happened on June 3, 2012 and apparently the plane had it’s last maintenance check on 1st June 2012. Since the maintenance check, it only had 9 flights before the crash.
My guess is that there was a maintenance error during the check 2 days prior to the crash. It’s awfully coincidental that reliable plane such as the MD80 with 35,219 successful flights would have this trouble 2 days after a big check.
Yeah, that’s pretty interesting. Something was screwed up.