End of a Pilgrimage

From November until late January, pilots landing at the International Airport near the northern Nigerian city of Kano must worry about a special hazard. Hot winds off the Sahara, known as harmattan, pick up so much dust and sand that the sky becomes hazy and visibility is drastically reduced. Last week a Royal Jordanian Airlines Boeing 707 coming in for a landing at Kano had to make a second attempt because of the blinding harmattan. As the plane landed on the second try, the 707 suddenly burst into flames, and 176 of its 202 passengers were killed. The death toll equaled that of an Aeroflot Ilyushin 62 crash near Moscow last October and shares its distinction as the highest in commercial aviation history.

The Jordanian jet was under charter to Nigeria Airways, which each year runs a special shuttle to ferry Nigerian Moslems making their pilgrimages to Mecca. Jordanian and Nigerian authorities differed on the cause of the crash. The Jordanians maintained that the runway had collapsed and that Pilot John Waterman, 53, an American with 22,000 jet hours, lost control because of the depression in the strip, which snapped the plane's rugged landing gear. The plane then slued off the runway and burst into flames when fuel lines were punctured.

The Nigerians denied that the runway was responsible for the crash and claimed that the pilot had ignored control-tower orders not to land because of weather conditions. Actually, the cause of the crash might have been a combination of factors. Aircraft experts pointed out that jet fuel in Nigeria is so expensive that the 707 might have been carrying an extra supply. Even though it was an estimated 10,000 Ibs. below its permissible landing weight of 247,000 Ibs., the heavy plane might have crumpled the runway. The resulting hole could have caused the landing gear to collapse.

The dead were buried in a common grave. There was one additional casualty when mourning relatives discovered a boy picking the pockets of the victims and pummeled him to death. Nigerian authorities hoped that the crash --and two days later the near crash of a chartered Ethiopian Airlines jet whose pilot, trying to land at Lagos airport, clipped the top of a tree--might dissuade some of the 30,000 Nigerian Moslems who annually make the hadj to Mecca. The shuttle is a drain on the country's foreign currency reserves. Beyond that, the government suspects that some Moslems go on the pilgrimage year after year for a more earthly reason than paying homage to Allah. As well as allowing them to venerate "the place where Abraham stood up to pray," the trip gives them an opportunity to smuggle home gold coin, jewelry and expensive cloth.

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