Asaba highway landing: Jet’s black box overwritten, says NSIB

The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) has disclosed that the flight data recorder (black box) of a private jet operated by VMO Aero was overwritten after the aircraft landed on a highway in Asaba, Delta State, on July 10. The event occurred when the Bombardier Challenger 601 missed its runway and instead touched down on a concrete road in Ogwashi-Uku.

The NSIB's Director-General, Alex Badeh, revealed that the flight crew flew the plane back to Lagos without proper authorization from Air Traffic Control, resulting in the loss of vital flight data. Flight recorders operate on a continuous circular memory system, meaning that once the storage capacity is reached, the newest data overwrites the oldest information.

In this case, the return flight meant that critical data from the Asaba incident was lost. Despite the overwrite, Badeh stated that investigators were still able to piece together information to understand what happened. The NSIB also highlighted concerns about the financial difficulties faced by the agency, as it receives the lowest percentage of the Ticket Sales Charge compared to other aviation sector agencies.

Badeh emphasized the need for a more sustainable funding structure to support the Bureau's expanded responsibilities in handling multimodal safety investigations across various transportation modes.