Dana Air said the plane had experienced no mechanical faults prior to its crashing into an apartment building in Nigeria's commercial hub of Lagos on Sunday afternoon.

Two days after 153 died in the country’s worst air disaster in two decades, the Nigerian government has suspended the air license of Dana Air, said the aviation ministry on Tuesday.

Dana Air said the plane had experienced no mechanical faults prior to its 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, spokesman for the minister of aviation, said by telephone.

"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 on a flight just before the fatal one.

"I am the pilot who did the [last] ... operational test flight," he said.

The Senate passed a motion ordering its aviation committee to "investigate the cause of the crash and ascertain the air worthiness of all other operating aircrafts in the country".

The “black box”
The Senate also recommended that the director of the civil aviation authority, Harold Demuren, a respected aeronautical engineer, step aside pending the inquiry.

Demuren told Reuters he would not comment: "It's a Senate motion and it’s up to the president to act upon it or not."