Military Plane Crash: NAF begins search for black box, recorders

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The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) says it has commenced efforts to recover the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder of its ATR-42 aircraft that crashed in Igbokoda, headquarters of Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State.

NAF Superintendent of Standards and Evaluation, Ebimobo Ebiowe, an air vice marshal, disclosed this to journalists at the crash site on Friday.

The aircraft, which was on a routine mission from Benin City, Edo State, to Lagos, crashed into a swamp near the Nigerian Navy’s Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Igbokoda on Monday, killing all 25 people on board.

Officials say the aircraft came down, breaking into two, with its main body fully submerged in the swamp with a refusal level of about 30 metres.

The development has made recovery of dead bodies and the parts of the aircraft difficult.

The difficult terrain greatly hampered rescue operations, and the military and government authorities were initially unsure how to approach the challenge.

It took about 48 hours for the Ondo State Government to deploy heavy machinery, such as swamp buggies, to begin search operations properly.

Military and local divers have continued to filter out broken pieces of human bodies and plane parts but have not been able to get to the actual body of the aircraft.

Rescuers say the decaying human parts make the surrounding water stink, while aviation fuel floating over the water at the site creates severe water pollution.

Mr Ebiowe said investigators were searching for critical wreckage components that could help establish the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

He identified the flight Data Recorder (FDR), commonly known as the “black box,” and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) as key components investigators hoped to recover.

“We hope to be able to find critical components of the aircraft that will speak to the investigators because the aircraft wreckage actually speaks to the investigators,” he said.

“One of them is what the ordinary man (civilian) calls the Black Box. We call it the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), and another component close to it, the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR),” Mr Ebiowe said.

The recorders are expected to provide crucial evidence for investigators seeking to reconstruct the aircraft’s final moments and determine the factors that led to the crash.

The Nigerian Navy had earlier deployed specialised sonar equipment to locate the submerged aircraft as recovery operations continued.

The Chief of the Naval Staff, Idi Abbas, a vice admiral, directed the Nigerian Navy Hydrographic Department to deploy personnel and advanced sonar-scanning equipment to the site to obtain an underwater picture of the crash location.

The Chief of the Air Staff, Sunday Aneke, had visited the site on Thursday, assuring that the military would conduct a comprehensive investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the crash and prevent a recurrence.

Mr Aneke, who appealed to the public to avoid speculation, said a high-level team comprising military and civilian aviation safety experts had been constituted to investigate the incident.

He said the team would include safety specialists, representatives of the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau and the Accident Investigation Bureau, emergency management agencies, retired senior military officers, and experienced NAF personnel.

The air chief said the investigation would leave no stone unturned in determining what went wrong.

The traditional ruler of Igbokoda, Afolabi Odidiomo, told journalists the community was prepared to help retrieve the aircraft from the swamp using unorthodox means.

“Now that the Afibian excavator has been able to create paths to that place, we are also waiting to see what it can do. If it cannot do anything and it can locate whatever is left of the plane, I can assure you that we’ll bring it out,” he said.

He said the community had begun discussing alternative ways to retrieve the wreckage, including using a large, locally made boat and chains.

“We have started meeting, discussing the possibility of how to bring it out, and it might not be the orthodox way,” he said.

“But then there’s a way we could bring a very big locally made boat with chains around it, and people will go down to tie it around whatever is there, so the big boat can actually, with its weight, pull it out.”

Mr Odidiomo said the difficult recovery conditions remained a major concern, particularly because human bodies may have been in the surrounding water.

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