Missing plane 'believed to have crashed'
Military helicopters searched in vain for a missing passenger plane that was carrying at least 114 people when it disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Nigeria's biggest city, officials said today.
The Boeing 737 aircraft, operated by Nigerian-run Bellview Airlines, lost contact with the control tower five minutes after taking off from the international airport in Lagos at 8:45 p.m. (2045 BST) on Saturday, said Jide Ibinola, a spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria.
Pilots issued a distress call before the plane disappeared from radar about 15 miles south of Lagos over the Atlantic Ocean, state television reported.
Airport officials said they believed the plane had crashed, although there was no confirmation of that.
Ibinola said military choppers dispatched to search for the aircraft failed to find it and returned to their base. "They will go out again as soon as it's daylight to see if the plane can be located," he said.
At least 108 passengers and six crew members were aboard, Ibinola said. Their nationalities were not immediately known.
Ibinola said the craft was headed to the capital, Abuja, on what was supposed to have been a 50-minute flight.
Most aircraft take off from Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city, in the direction of the Atlantic, and turn back toward the coast.
"We still don't have any concrete information of what became of the plane," Ibinola said. "We've tried from neighbouring countries to see if the plane landed there but there's no such information."
No other details were immediately available.
Frantic relatives of the passengers and crew gathered at Lagos's Murtala Muhammad airport, seeking news.
Esosan Imasuen, waiting for hours without an update, said his father was the captain of the flight.
"Right now I'm in a state of suspended animation," said the 22-year old student. "I'm just waiting for concrete information to know what to think."
Bellview, one of about a dozen local airlines plying Nigeria's skies, is a privately owned Nigerian company that operates a fleet of mostly Boeing 737s on internal routes and throughout West Africa. Bellview first began flying about 10 years ago and has not suffered a crash before.
