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

The flight data recorder, commonly known as the black box, from a private jet that made an emergency landing on a highway in Asaba, Nigeria, has been overwritten, according to the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB). The Bombardier Challenger 601 private jet, operated by VMO Aero, missed the airport runway on July 10 and landed on a concrete road in Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State.

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The rule allows them to have a 26-hour electric recorder but we discover that it only recorded for about two hour of low quality, from when the aircraft took of from Lagos, landed in Asaba and went back they have overwritten everything that happened within that that time.

NSIB Director-General Alex Badeh revealed that the aircraft was flown back to Lagos by its crew before investigators could secure the scene. This return flight effectively overwrote the critical flight data stored in the recorder, which uses a continuous circular memory system. New data replaces the oldest information once the storage capacity is reached.

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That means thing will be made difficult but we still worked in other ways to ensure that we are able to get the data.

Badeh explained that the recorder captured only about two hours of low-quality data, from the flight's departure from Lagos to its return. This means crucial information related to the Asaba incident is no longer available. He noted that while the flight recorders did not function as expected, he is not yet blaming the operators, as the investigation is ongoing.

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So, for me I don’t think the airlines are going out of their way to destroy evidence. but they have an LOI from the NCAA, about two Lois now to my knowledge reminding them to preserve data and we are… NSIB have had a workshop with operators, reminding them to preserve data hopefully we may have another work.

The NSIB boss cautioned against immediately concluding that the operators deliberately destroyed evidence, emphasizing that investigators are still working to establish the exact sequence of events. The flight crew was arrested upon their arrival in Lagos and handed over to the Department of State Services for further investigation. Badeh also expressed concern about what he described as the aircraft's flight back to Lagos without clearance from Air Traffic Control.

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but they have an LOI from the NCAA, about two Lois now to my knowledge reminding them to preserve data and we are… NSIB have had a workshop with operators, reminding them to preserve data hopefully we may have another work.