The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has claimed that the helicopter crash that killed former Access Holdings CEO, Herbert Wigwe, his wife, son, and three others, was due to pilot error caused by spatial disorientation.
This was contained in a NTSB report released on Wednesday.
It further indicted the helicopter company, accusing it of “inadequate oversight of its safety management processes”.
Preliminary report had earlier shown that the helicopter, registered as N130CZ, crashed while operating under visual flight rules in what ultimately became instrument meteorological conditions, requiring different flight protocols and instrumentation.
According to the report, investigators determined the “probable cause of this accident to be: the pilot’s decision to continue the visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the pilot’s spatial disorientation and loss of control.”
The crash, which occurred near the California-Nevada border on February 9, 2024, claimed the lives of all six people on board, including Wigwe, his wife Doreen, their son Chizi, and Abimbola Ogunbanjo, former group chairman of Nigerian Exchange Group Plc.
The US accident investigators further revealed that the helicopter company failed to ensure pilots properly completed flight risk analyses, recorded maintenance issues, and followed required regulations before departure.