The Dana Air, MC Donnell Douglas MD 83, that crashed in Iju-Ishaga, on Sunday, was manufactured in 1983, and has had a history of mechanical problems with it’s former owners, US-based Alaska Airlines, before it was sold to Dana Airlines in 2009.
According to a statement by the Aviation Safety Network, a global service of the Air Safety Foundation (ASF), on Monday, the ill-fated aircraft was acquired by Alaska Airline on November 13, 1990.
Twelve years later, on November 4, 2002, the aircraft developed mechanical faults and had an emergency diversion due to smoke in the cabin area, which engineers said was because light ballast had over heated.
Also, on August 20, 2006, passengers had to be quickly evacuated after landing at Long Beach, California, due to a chaffed wire bundle that discharged and produced smoke in the cabin area. The incident was listed with the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) records as incident LAX06IA301.
On that day, the plane landed without incident, but while taxiing to parking, the cabin crew intimated their colleagues on the flight crew about a smelly smoke from an electrical spark, which had permeated the cabin area. Around the same time circuit breakers popped and alarms went off.
A direct quote from the NTSB report states that “Maintenance personnel noted minor damage to the airplane as a result of a chaffed wire bundle in the mid-cargo pit ceiling at station 750 that had arced and produced smoke in the cabin area. The area was identified as a Boeing-designed and retrofitted over wing heater wiring installation.”
Subsequently, Alaska Airlines, on August 21, parked the aircraft until September 11 2008 when it carried out maintenance work on it.
Five months after repairs where concluded, Alaska Airlines sold the aircraft, as 5N-RAM, to Dana Airlines on February 17, 2009.
Sources at Dana Air, confirmed to Channels Television that the plane has experienced a number of faults while on flight across the country.
But unlike their counterparts in the US, the Indian management of Dana Airline failed to park the air-craft and conduct thorough maintenance when faults developed with the aircraft, Rather, commercials flights were continued with the plane, even shortly after emergency landing.
On May 23, after passengers had boarded the aircraft, it was allegedly delayed from take-off at the Lagos airport as aeronautic engineers discovered some faults and changed the hydraulic fluid under the left side under carriage tyre mechanism.
Dana Air Flight 0992 crashed into a two-storey building in Iju-Ishaga, a densely populated area in Lagos state, 4 nautical miles from reaching the runway of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, killing all 153 passengers on board. Residents of the building were also killed in the crash and explosion.
The MD-83 was manufactured in 1983, announced go-ahead on January 31, 1983 and had first flight on December 17, 1984.
It was a longer range development of the basic MD-81/82 with higher weights, more powerful engines, increased fuel capacity and longer range.
It was equipped with slightly more powerful 21,000 1bf Pratt and Whitney JT8D-219s as standard.
The aircraft also had higher operating weights with MTOW increased to 160,000 1b and MLW to 139,500 1b.
