by Hauwa Gambo

There are reports that the team of investigators from our local Accident Investigation Bureau and the United States National Transportation Safety Board are looking seriously into samples of aviation fuel collected from all of Dana Air’s Boeing MD-83 planes aircraft.

The investigators are said to have begun tests on samples of aviation fuel, collected from the airline’s planes in Lagos.

“The development, it was gathered, was based on the belief that the dual engine failure experienced by the ill-fated Dana plane, which crashed into residential buildings in Iju-Ishaga area of Lagos and killed over 145 people, might have been caused by contaminated fuel. According to experts, a fuel is said to be contaminated when it contains some amount of water or sediments,” Punch has reported.

“The investigators were said to be focusing on the samples of the fuel in the planes because majority of past cases of dual engine failure in the global aviation industry had been discovered to have been caused by fuel supply issues.

“Sources said the investigators were not yet satisfied with the results they were getting so far from the samples of fuel collected.

A source in Dana, who confided in our correspondent, disclosed that the investigators had been collecting samples of fuel from the remaining planes in the carrier’s fleet.

“Yes, a team of investigators has been coming to collect samples of fuel from our remaining airplanes. Members of the team have been coming since Tuesday. Up till this morning, they still came. In fact, we have run out of fuel sampling bottles, which we used to conduct tests on fuel every morning when we were still in operation,” the source said.

However, the AIB’s spokesman, Tunji Oketumbi says this is a routine exercis in accident investigations.

We’ll see.