page_title: ADC Airlines Flight 53
section_title: Investigation
hierarchical_section_title: ADC Airlines Flight 53 / Investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: A picture of a Cumulonimbus incus cloud taken through a car window on a road trip. Taken somewhere in central BC. I edited it with GIMP to bring out the details in the cloud.
context_page_description: Aviation Development Company Airlines Flight 53 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by ADC Airlines that crashed on 29 October 2006 shortly after take-off from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Nigeria, at 11:30 am local time. Immediately after takeoff from Abuja, the Boeing 737 contacted the ground, broke up and caught fire in a corn field. The flight carried 100 passengers and 5 crew. Muhammadu Maccido, the Sultan of Sokoto and spiritual leader of Nigeria's Muslims, the sultan's son, Senator Badamasi Maccido, Dr Nnennia Mgbor, the first ever female West African ENT surgeon, and Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former president Shehu Shagari, were on the passenger list. Nine people survived, among those the 3 daughters of Ibrahim Idris, governor of Kogi.
  The plane was heading for the northern state of Sokoto.
  The crash sparked intense national protest to improve the nation's aviation sector. It is the direct cause for the change of the minister of aviation and the complete change to its aviation sector. This was the eleventh Nigerian airliner crash since 1995, bringing the death toll to more than 500 people.
context_section_description: The Nigerian Aircraft Investigation Bureau started an investigation for the cause of the crash with representatives from the U.S National Transportation Safety Board. Investigators examined the wreckage and the crash site. Based on their examination, the left wing of the aircraft first made contact with a tree branch. The aircraft impacted the ground with a high nose up position and an extreme left bank. The airplane disintegrated and a fuel spill ignited an inferno.
  Ninety-six of the one hundred and five persons on board were fatally injured by impact forces and post-crash fire as the majority of the fuselage section of the aircraft was destroyed. One cabin crew member, aft seated, survived along with eight other passengers as the structure in their immediate environment remained substantially intact.
  Analysis from black box: Just before takeoff, the crew confirmed reports of windshear, as evident from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). During takeoff, the intensity of the rain increased to heavy. The first sign of difficulty was heard on the CVR just two seconds after the first officer called "eighty knots". The captain replied with "Ah" instead of saying "checked". Four seconds later, the landing gear was retracted and the V2 callout was given by the first officer. Two seconds after the V2 callout, a windshear warning was triggered, as the aircraft experienced a rapid change in wind direction. In trying to recover, the crew pitched the nose up to between 30° and 35° as revealed by the FDR, thereby greatly exceeding the critical angle of attack, activating the stick-shaker (as confirmed by the cockpit voice recorder). As a result of the high pitch attitude, the airflow into the engines was disrupted causing the both engines to experience a compressor stall. Flight control inputs by the crew resulted in an aerodynamic stall, altitude loss, and subsequent ground impact. As a result of the rapid descent, the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) was indicated to have been producing terrain warnings until impact.
  Analysis from the pilot's reaction: Although bad weather created the situation to which the pilots reacted, their reaction was not in accordance with windshear recovery procedure. The simulator training the crew undertook at Sabena Flight Academy in Brussels, Belgium did not adequately prepare them to handle the situation in which they found themselves, even though the aircraft appeared to have enough energy to fly through the adverse weather condition. The simulator used for the training did not have the same facilities as the actual aircraft; windshear recognition and recovery was not part of the simulator training the first officer received. The captain received windshear training but it was not applicable as the simulator was not the same as the actual aircraft. Throughout the emergency period (from the first windshear warning to the ground impact) the responses from the pilot-not-flying was not in conformity with the windshear recovery procedures.
  Data shown from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency showed that at 09:30 and 09:45, there were scattered low top cumulus clouds. Investigators noted that significant cloud formation had occurred in the area. However, the cloud formation suddenly 'exploded' sometime between 09:45 and 11:00 UTC, and became a storm cell. These 'explosion' was called as a rapid intensification. Conditions evolved from scatteredlow-top cumulus to an isolated convective cell with estimated tops to above 45000 ft in just over an hour.
caption: A cumulonimbus cloud. Most windshear occurs in this type of cloud.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "FE310,X840,C530", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.4.2", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:26 19:47:33", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "824", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3616", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5659", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "39/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Creative", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:07:14 06:02:52", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:07:14 06:02:52", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "297/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "11", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "3492", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}