![image: [ From our own correspondent Hilary Andersson ]](/olmedia/60000/images/_61018_anderson.jpg)
Air travel in many developing countries can be a risky business - and Nigeria is no exception. Planes, long since abandoned by western airlines, are sold off to African countries, where they're often poorly maintained. An air disaster in late 1996, which killed 144 people, made Nigerians aware of the need to improve safety standards. But as our Lagos correspondent Hilary Andersson has just found out, flying in Nigeria can be as terrifying as ever.
Nigeria is covered in a thick brown, and sometimes, yellowish, haze. Harmattan, a season caused by a wind that blows over West Africa from the Sahara desert every year, is here - and this year it's late. When I was getting ready to fly to the central city of Jos a week ago, I had no idea what this might mean.
The aeroplane, belonging to a privately run Nigerian airline, Kabo, looked fairly decrepit, but there was nothing unusual about that. It is fairly normal on Nigerian planes to eat off the next door tray because yours has long since fallen off, and if you really expect to have an arm rest you're being optimistic. The airconditioning was pumping so much white smoke around the cabin that I could hardly see my right arm anyway.
The pilot abandoned all normal rules of restraint and started his high speed belt down the runway before he had turned the corner to point in the right direction. An hour later, and near Jos, he put the landing gear down. Apparently we would soon be on the ground.
But the ground was nowhere in sight, obscured by the dust outside. Then a burning field appeared beneath us. The pilot took a sharp left hand turn - then a sharp right, perhaps he was looking for the runway. The ground was horribly close. We were hurtling along at what seemed like full flying speed, now at a serious angle, with the right wing pointing downwards. The ground was the height of a telephone pole beneath us. At the count of three we would surely have crashed. My heart was beating like a drum, and I could hardly breathe. The fifty passengers of so were silent with shock. At the last moment the pilot pulled up and the control tower whizzed by the window too close for comfort. Would we crash into another plane now, I wondered.
The thick clouds of dust enveloped us and we headed up into the skies. Perhaps in any other country the story would have ended here - we would have diverted to another airport. But no, the pilot wanted to have another go. The second time, when the passengers were crossing themselves and praying, we missed again. The pilot, who blamed it on poor visibility, spotted the runway late, and we tore back up into the sky at the last minute again like a big doomed bird. On the third approach the mental torture was almost unbearable. It was nearly completely dark outside. Over the loudspeaker we were told we had enough fuel to divert, but not until we had tried again. This time the burning fields below appeared like something out of Dante's inferno. We swerved, and jerked, the plane juddered as we nearly stopped in the air - and then we hit the ground without much of the runway left in front of us. Miraculously we managed to stop, and I sat with my head between my legs, which were too weak to walk.
I asked a colleague who had come to meet me at the airport and who had watched the entire spectacle from the ground if he had ever seen anything like this at Jos aiport - and he said: "Oh yes". Last year a plane, having trouble landing, crashed into a telephone tower near the runway. Apparently we were lucky that the tower is not there any more otherwise we would have hit it too.
When a 727 crashed in Nigeria in November 1996 killing a 144 people, due we are told either to pilot error or to a mistake in air traffic control, people sat up and took notice. Fares were increased in the hope that the airlines would spend some of the money on maintenance. But it doesn't seem to have made much difference. This week Changchangi airlines - which has been hailed as the the newest and safest private airline in the country - collapsed when its only plane went up in flames on the tarmac.
Remarkably, Nigerians, ever intent to succeed in spite of the odds, seem more than prepared to put up with the risks of airtravel. Perhaps because there are so many other dangers of living in Africa's largest and most energetic country.
On public holidays when everyone, it seems, wants a seat on any airline at any cost, the pushing and the shouting starts on the tarmac, and security men have to lash huge whips at the entrance of the planes to keep the people off.
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