I t was supposed to be a routine landing. But on July 23, an Enugu Air flight from Lagos to Benin came within seconds of a far worse ending. The Embraer jet, flight ENU4264 with registration 5N-ENR, touched down on Runway 05 at Oba Akenzua II Airport with 63 passengers and 5 crew on board. Instead of stopping on the runway, the plane kept going. It ran off the paved surface, smashed into approach lights and two abandoned concrete structures, and finally came to a rest on bare ground. Everyone walked away. Passengers and crew used the emergency slides to get out, and no one was injured. But what should have been just another incident report has now exposed deeper problems at the Benin airport. The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau released its preliminary findings on Friday, and the picture is worrying. Investigators said the crash was not only about the aircraft. The airport itself made a bad situation more dangerous. NSIB pointed to three key issues. First, old equipment from a dec...