Description

Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 was a chartered passenger flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Sokoto, Nigeria, on 11 July 1991, which caught fire shortly after takeoff from King Abdulaziz International Airport and crashed while attempting to return for an emergency landing, killing all 247 passengers and 14 crew members on board. The investigation traced the fire to underinflated tires which overheated and burst during takeoff, and subsequently discovered that a project manager had prevented those tires from being replaced because the aircraft was behind schedule. The aircraft was a Douglas DC-8 operated by Nationair Canada for Nigeria Airways. Flight 2120 is the deadliest accident involving a DC-8 and the deadliest aviation disaster involving a Canadian airline.