1995 Lagos Harka Air Services Tu-134 crash

Harka Air Services

Industry	Aviation
Headquarters	Lagos , Nigeria
Products	Air transport services

Template:Infobox aircraft occurrence

The 1995 Lagos Harka Air Services Tu-134 accident took place on 24 June 1995 when a Tupolev Tu-134 model Tu-134A operated by Harka Air Services on a route from Kaduna to Lagos overran the runway during its landing at Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The aircraft veered off into a drainage ditch and subsequently caught fire. Among the 74 passengers and six crew members aboard, sixteen lost their lives in this event.

Aircraft

Produced in 1974 by the Kharkiv State Aircraft Manufacturing Company, the Tu-134A had a service history beginning with East Germany’s airline Interflug, where it operated under registrations DM-SCT, DDR-SCT, and D-AOBH from 1974 until 1990. In 1991, it was re-registered as CCCP-65617 and transferred to the Soviet Union to serve with Komiavia. The registration changed again to RA-65617 in 1992. On December 15 of that year, the aircraft was leased to Nigeria’s Harka Air Services. Prior to the incident, it had logged a total of 24,844 flight hours alongside 15,740 landings.

Accident

The flight from Kaduna to Lagos was operated by a Russian flight crew led by Captain V. V. Lerner and supported by Nigerian cabin attendants. As the aircraft neared Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, initial weather reports indicated moderate winds with light rain. However, conditions worsened swiftly with heavy rainfall occurring just as the airplane was touching down. The runway surface became slick due to rainwater accumulation. This led to hydroplaning, preventing effective braking; consequently, the plane overshot the runway boundary, entered the safety zone, collided with a concrete drainage channel, fragmented, and ignited.

Evacuation efforts were complicated by ineffective communication between the Russian pilots and Nigerian cabin crew, likely influenced by language differences. This breakdown resulted in some passengers remaining in their seats and succumbing to the ensuing fire. Ultimately, sixteen passengers died as a result of this accident.