A plane with 103 passengers and seven crew members on board crashed in the southern Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt on Saturday, killing 103 people, officials said.

 

Sam Adurogboye, spokesman for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, told Xinhua that the Sosoliso Airlines flight traveling from Abuja, Nigeria's capital, crashed at about 2 PM (1300 GMT) on a final touch down to the runway and burst into flames immediately.

 

"A total of 110 people are on board, only seven survived, the rest are killed," Adurogboye said. The cause of the crash is not immediately available but he said there is "bad weather" in Port Harcourt.

 

More than half of the deceased reportedly are students returning home for holidays but Adurogboye would not confirm this. Telephone calls to Sosoliso Airlines were not answered.

 

Aviation Minister Babalola Borishade had cut short his official engagement in Canada, where he is discussing safety oversight functions with officials of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and International Aviation Transport Authority (IATA).

 

Currently, Emperor Onasanya, head of the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), has taken charge of rescue operations at the site of the plane crash, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported.

 

"The rescue team included firefighters, NAMA search and rescue operations personnel and other people within the environment," it said.

 

Nigeria has a poor record for aviation safety because most of its airliners are second ones having used for more than 20 years or even over 30 years.

 

Sosoliso Airlines, established in 1994 as a wholly Nigerian owned company, was the 2004 best domestic airline of the year award winner in the west African country. It began scheduled flights as a domestic airline in July 2000 and now flies to six Nigerian cities, according to its website.

 

In October, a Boeing 737-200 operated by Nigeria's Bellview Airlines crashed on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, killing 117 people on board. But the black boxes are still missing and there are no official words about what brought the plane down.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2005)