What happened
On the evening of June 11, 2015, an HS-125-800XP, registration N497AG, was conducting a charter flight from Abuja to Port Harcourt International Airport. The flight was operating under Instrument Flight Rules with a total of five people on board, consisting of three crew members and two passengers. During the approach, the aircraft encountered light rain and was cleared to land with a caution regarding the wet runway surface.
As the aircraft descended toward the runway, the crew noted visibility issues due to the rain. During the final stages of the ILS approach, the pilot monitoring observed that the runway edge lights were clearly visible on the left side, but the lights on the right side were largely obscured or missing from view. The pilot monitoring attempted to correct the aircraft's position, noting that the plane was drifting left of the centerline. Despite these warnings, the pilot flying reduced power and turned further to the left at low altitude.
At approximately 19:16 h, the aircraft touched down with the left main gear in the grass and the right main gear on the runway. The aircraft then veered off the runway, causing the nose landing gear to collapse. The aircraft came to a stop on the runway, and all five persons on board disembarked without any injury.
Findings
Investigation of the cockpit voice recorder revealed that the pilot flying mistook the brightly illuminated left runway edge lights for the runway centerline, leading to the lateral deviation. The pilot's error in judgment caused the aircraft to drift left of the actual runway path during the landing flare.