Investigations have confirmed that the inability of the pilot to turn on the fuel pumps of the ill-fated Dana Air flight that crashed at a Lagos suburb on June 3, 2012, killing about 160 people, led to the failure of the two engines and the eventual crash.
The captain of the aircraft, was an American Peter Waxtan, was making his last flight to Lagos from Abuja when the plane crashed, killing all on board and a few people on the ground.
Reports indicated that 17 minutes into the flight, Waxtan noticed problems with one of the engines of the aircraft and a little later, the second engine of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft went off and it lost attitude before it crashed a few minutes to landing at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.
The Wall Street Journal showed that the accident was likely caused by the crew's failure to properly monitor fuel flow and turn on certain fuel pumps, which resulted in both engines shutting down almost simultaneously from lack of fuel. No other significant problems were discovered with the engines or other systems of the aircraft, and the 22-year-old plane had plenty of fuel on board to reach the airport, according to people familiar with the joint investigation by the US and Nigerian officials.
The crash sparked an intense fire that raged for nearly a day and compromised the flight-data recorder. So investigators had less data to rely on than is usual in modern jetliner crashes and are still working on the final wording of the report.
The cockpit voice recorder, which survived intact, showed the pilots spent the last 25 seconds unsuccessfully trying to restart the engines.
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