Ethiopian B763 at Lagos on Dec 13th 2009, ATC radar and comms failure leads to fuel emergency

Incident: Ethiopian B763 at Lagos on Dec 13th 2009, ATC radar and comms failure leads to fuel emergency

By Simon Hradecky, created Monday, Dec 14th 2009

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767-300, flight ET-901 from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) to Lagos (Nigeria) with 180 passengers, was on approach to Lagos, when the air traffic control's radar and communication radios failed. Unable to obtain a landing clearance the crew entered a holding but eventually had to declare emergency about 2 hours later and land in Lagos without landing clearance. The airplane landed safely.

Several other flights, amongst them a Qatar Airways Airbus A330-200 flight QR-592 from Doha (Qatar) to Lagos with 190 passengers, also performed precautionary landings after holding at Lagos, a number of aircraft diverted to other airports.

Nigeria's Airspace Management Agency NAMA confirmed the incident reporting their radar and communication systems had broken down at around noon and remained unavailable for more than 2 hours.

Nigeria's CAA also confirmed the incident. An investigation has been launched, additional measures to prevent a similiar break down are being taken. NAMA should have contingency plans in case such failures occur.

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