Dana Air's McDonnell Douglas - MD-83 in Flight sold to DANA AIR by ALASKA AIR, U.S.A in 2008.

Inside the cockpit of a McDonnell Douglas - MD-83

A preliminary independent inquiry into the Dana Air crash of Sunday June 3, 2012 reveals that Dana Air might have purchased an aircraft with a pre-existing safety issue and a troubling past safety record.

The question therefore is whether the necessary due diligence was carried out on the aircraft in question prior to purchase and operation in Nigeria. Or whether the Nigerian aviation authorities were aware of this fact before allowing the said aircraft into service locally.

Dana Air’s McDonnell Douglas - MD-83 - jet is part of a fleet that was sold off by Alaskan Airlines in 2008 as the company upgraded its existing fleet to include more fuel-efficient aircrafts.

With regards to the specific Dana aircraft in question, which flew within the Nigerian airspace under registration number 5N-RAM, it was discovered that this aircraft was previously registered to Alaskan Airlines with FAA N-number N944AS. The Construction Number (CN) of the plane was 53019/1783.

Checks with the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) revealed that the ill-fated aircraft, which first flew in 1990, had a previous aircraft incident within US airspace.

The incident occurred on the August 20th 2006 and is listed in 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 an smelly smoke from an electrical spark , which had permeated the cabin area.

Around the same time circuit breakers popped and alarms went off. The plane was stopped, and an emergency evacuation of all passengers on board took place. 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."

“Engineers for the operator and manufacturer of the airplane determined that arcing was likely due to the left and right over wing heater blanket wiring that contacted the edge of the wire bundle bracket that attached to the second inboard lighting hole at station 750 in the mid-cargo pit ceiling on the left side."

They also determined that the vibration through normal airplane operation allowed the bracket to cut through the wire insulation and then contact was made to the wire conductor and arcing occurred. The operator inspected their entire fleet of affected airplanes and noted one other wire bundle discrepancy.

“The Manufacturer of the airplane identified one other operator with a similar configuration. A service bulletin was issued identifying the problem and provided instructions on adjusting the cable bundles in order to prevent future occurrences”.

Although the actual cause of Sunday’s air crash is yet to be determined, the question remains as to whether the problems of this aircraft were resolved satisfactorily and whether the eventual buyers of the plane (Dana Air) and the Nigerian Ministry of Aviation were aware of this fact and took necessary measures to ensure that the aircraft was safe enough to operate within Nigeria’s airspace.

However, prior to this deal Alaskan Airlines has had several incidents with some of its MD-83 aircrafts, at least one of such incidents resulted in a fatal air crash. The air crash occurred on January 31st 2000, when Alaskan Airlines 261, crashed into the Pacific Ocean killing two pilots, three cabin crewmembers, and 83 passengers.

The crash occurred following the loss of the horizontal stabilizer control. Inadequate maintenance was cited by the United States’ Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the primary cause of the crash, which had originated from a worn out acme nut and jackscrew within the aircraft’s assembly.

While we wait for an official explanation, following the promised"a thorough investigation” from aviation authorities, we will take the necessary steps to conduct a more comprehensive independent investigation in the short-term lest this become another victim of a quickly forgotten tragedy. Copies of a final report will be made available to the necessary authorities and the general public. We believe that this aircraft accident calls to question the information made available to the Nigerian flying public about the aircraft in service with various aviation operators in the country and the maintenance/operational standards of these operators

Watch the exact plane McDonnell Douglas MD-83

Take Off in USA

POOR SAFETY RECORDS OF THE

McDonnell Douglas MD-83 in U.S.A

The Safety Record of the MD-80-83

The MD-80 and its variants are among the last extant reminders that there once was another American manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, to compete with Boeing and Airbus for jet orders from the airlines.

Measured by accident data alone, the MD-80 is considered to be one of the safest planes in the sky. According to Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the plane has a fatal hull loss rate — meaning a crash involving fatalities — of 0.34 per one million departures, and an overall hull-loss, or crash, rate of 0.52 per million departures.

By comparison, the average record for all commercial jets is 0.89 fatal hull losses per million departures, and an overall rate of 1.64 hull losses per million departures, Boeing said.

The figures include today’s crash in Madrid of an MD-82, Spanair Flight JK5022, which appears to have killed more than 150 people, according to Spanish authorities.

The crash comes only a few months after American Airlines’ battle with the Federal Aviation Administration over the inspection of its fleet of MD80s, which put the plane in a spotlight with American travelers last spring.

The MD-80 has its roots in the 1960s, when it was developed as a descendant of the DC-9, which in turn was a companion to the DC-8 jet, one of the first airliners of the jet era. The DC-9, still in use by Northwest Airlines, was designed to be used on shorter flights; the Douglas Aircraft half of McDonnell-Douglas developed the MD-80 as a second generation of the DC-9. It was originally called the Super 80, and you still see that name used by American in its timetables.

It has been a workhorse for a wide variety of airlines, from SwissAir and Austrian Airlines the first to fly it, to American, Delta, Alitalia and Scandinavian Air Systems, the owner of Spanair. Nearly 1,200 were built in various configurations between 1980 and 1999, the year when Boeing, which had merged with McDonnell-Douglas two years earlier, decided to discontinue production and focus instead on its own short-range jet, the Boeing 737.

During its lifetime, the MD-80 family has had some high-profile problems:

– In 1987, an MD-82 crashed just outside the airport in Detroit, killing 156 people including two on the ground. The only survivor was a four-year-old girl, who was found strapped into her seat in the crash debris. The National Transportation Stabilization Board concluded that the pilots of the plane had incorrectly deployed the plane’s wing flaps, meaning the jet was not in the proper position to fly. A faulty warning system failed to alert the pilots to the problem.

– The left engine on a Delta Air Lines MD-88 failed on takeoff in Pensacola, Fla, in 1996, causing pieces of the engine to pierce the fuselage and penetrate the cabin, killing two of the plane’s 137 passengers.

– In January 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 crashed into the Pacific Oceanoff Point Magu, Calif., killing 88 people. The pilot had declared an emergency and was trying to get to Los Angeles International Airport when the accident took place. The safety board said improper maintenance was to blame for the crash.

– The most recent attention paid to the plane was not crash related: Last spring, American canceled thousands of flights and grounded its 300 MD-80sto check that wiring bundles were properly secured inside the planes’ wheel wells. The groundings prompted a sparring match between the airline and the F.A.A., which American contended had unfairly changed the rules for how carriers should respond to safety directives.

Last week, the F.A.A. proposed civil penalties of $7.1 million against American for flying two MD-80s in December when it knew they were not airworthy. American said it disagreed with the finding and called the penalties “excessive.”