What happened
During a flight originating from Kano, the crew initiated their descent toward Lagos-Ikeja Airport. While the captain was granted clearance for a straight-in approach, heavy fog significantly reduced visibility during the final stages of the flight. As the aircraft progressed on its final approach, it descended below the necessary altitude required for safety. The aircraft type (unspecified) subsequently collided with trees and crashed approximately 13 km before reaching runway 19. The impact resulted in the total destruction of the plane and 87 fatalities, with no survivors reported among the occupants.
Findings
Investigation efforts faced significant challenges due to technical failures within the onboard recording equipment. Although engineers from the British AAIB found the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) to be physically intact, the data contained within it was unreadable because it consisted of an unusable stream of binary digits. This issue was attributed to a malfunction in a logic unit that remained undetectable to the crew during flight. Because no usable information could be recovered from the recorder, investigators could not pinpoint a definitive technical failure. However, evidence suggests that the crew descended the aircraft below the minimum safe altitude while the plane remained under operational control.