Enugu Air incident is an accident: My apologies — by Kelechi Deca

This event reminds me of Murphy’s Law which states that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Out of the 69 episodes of Aircrash Investigations Seconds to Disaster documentary series, I have watched 48. That offered me a non classroom basic education on how to approach issues as this.

When the news of the Enugu Air incident at Benin Airport broke last week, I made two points which I am withdrawing based on the information available to me, and the need to err on the side of caution because it was a developing story.

Our elders said that “ If the Sun changes direction, the canopies should be adjusted”.

First I responded to a post by Uche Nworah where I stated that it was not a crash landing, that it was a runway excursion, and I went ahead to highlight the differences.

With what I know now, even though investigations by the National Safety and Investigations Bureau (NSIB), I state that it was a crash landing.

Second, I stated in my post a day after the event that it was an incident, but I am also withdrawing that because it can now be categorically classified as an accident.

In aviation, an event is regarded as an accident if it involves death, serious injury, or major structural damage to the aircraft, whereas an incident is an event that affects or could affect safety but does not result in such severe outcomes.

According to ICAO Annex 13, an accident occurs from the time a person boards with the intention of flight until everyone has disembarked, leading to any of the following: fatal or serious injury to any person, substantial damage or structural failure that negatively affects structural strength or performance of the equipment, or the aircraft going missing or becoming completely inaccessible.

From my investigations which have lasted for four days, I can state that the Enugu Air runway excursion at Benin Airport is a textbook case study in systemic failures, where the convenient excuse of “hydroplaning” masks a deeper rot of professional negligence.

While the airline’s CEO asserts this was simply a weather-related incident, the convergence of factors paints a disturbing picture of human errors across the cockpit, the control tower, and airport management.

Eye witnesses and even tracking shows that there was a miscalculation on the part of the Pilot that led to landing outside the touchdown zone without fully factoring the available length of the runway being that the Benin Airport runway is not that long.

The Pilot might probably be evading flooded areas or suffering from weather induced visual challenges that reduced visibility to its lowest especially in an airport that has a very poor runway lighting system.

Landing long, especially in wet conditions, demonstrates a poor approach assessment and situational awareness, effectively setting the stage for disaster. This forced the aircraft to rely on a perilously reduced runway length to decelerate, a gamble that failed.

A Go-Round would have solved all these problems, and that is a decision the Air Traffic Controller should have advised the Pilot knowing how inclement the conditions are.

Benin Airport is a sunset airport thus cannot handle night landings and take offs. It is only equipped with Approach Lighting System (ALS) which is a configuration of sequential strobe and bar lights extending outward from the runway threshold to help transition from instrument flight to visual landing.

It also has the Precision Approach Path Indicator (PAPI) which is a set of side-mounted units using red and white light combinations to show pilots if they are on the correct glide slope.

That airport runway system is a CAT 1, it does not have Runway Edge Lights which are the White (or yellow/white near the end) lights that outline the outer borders of the runway to show pilots the sides which are CAT 2.

It does not have Runway Centerline Lights, which are the white lights embedded down the middle of the runway, which switch to alternating white and red, and then solid red in the final 1,000 feet to signal distance remaining, which is CAT 3.

And I am not sure if it has Threshold Lights which are usually green lights that mark the beginning or start of the usable landing zone, not to talk of Runway End Lights, usually made up of red lights that mark the absolute end of the runway.

They do not even have Runway End Identifier Lights (REIL) which synchronizes flashing strobe lights placed on the corners of the runway threshold to help pilots spot the runway from a distance. Benin airport is still operating on CAT 1 in 2026, when many airports across the world are transitioning to CAT 7.

With all the challenges above, that aircraft could still have been recovered if FAAN paid attention to certain obstructions within the vicinity of the runway.

At the end of the runway, there used to be a lightning signpost for ILS Runway 23 which was later discarded. That was the main culprit, and I hope the investigators would point it out.

That signpost has a rugged concrete base of about 2 meters in elevation. When the sign was removed, no efforts were made to either excavate the concrete base or level it so it would not be an obstruction in future.

We are not gifted with thinking about the future, so that concrete base was left there. It was that concrete base as shown in the video that the aircraft slammed into and lost all its landing gears plus the left engine.

This is where the case becomes criminal negligence on the part of the airport management. Leaving a discarded, hazardous concrete pavement from an old ILS Runway 23 project inside the active runway environment is not merely an oversight; it is a profound act of operational negligence.

Without that concrete, the aircraft would have rolled onto grass until it stopped.

This obstacle acted as a ramp, shearing off the landing gear and engine in an incident that was entirely predictable.

Furthermore, the airport’s failure to maintain adequate friction coefficients for a runway surface vulnerable to contamination is a direct dereliction of duty.

A full investigation is non-negotiable. It must extend beyond the cockpit to unearth why an aging, obstacle-strewn, and poorly maintained runway was certified for operations.

This incident was waiting to happen, and only a thorough, transparent investigation can begin to fix a system that has clearly failed.