Russian Cargo plane in Kano - Another cover-up?

Story for the gods?

Story broke this morning few hours after I posted the AK-47 makeover and in the last lines suggested Russia could be looking at Nigeria as an alternative market due to the sanctions preventing her from exporting arms to her major customers in the US and EU.

Few hours later, news broke that a Russian cargo plane accidentally landed at Kano international airport and had been seized and the crew detained by the NA.

Mr Layi on my vibrant politics oriented bbm group quickly pointed out that there was no way a plane originating from Russia would have to pass through Nigerian airspace.

That got me thinking and I tried to make sense of the news, these are my findings.

Layi was absolutely correct..

The distance between Chad and Moscow is about 4800km as the crow flies.

That between Kano and Moscow is about 5500km as the crow flies.

Its safe to assume a Russian originating cargo plane will want to avoid flying over some countries and the distance will be a tad longer.

Chad has only one international airport, the N’Djamena international airport used for both civil and military purposes.

The Russian cargo plane with long range that could be used for such a job is either the

Heavy Transport Aircraft An - 124 "Ruslan" NATO Designation "Condor" a 4 engine aircraft that can fly at a maximum altitude of 12000 meters and go a maximum distance of 4500km if carrying full payload (150 tons) but with about 40t payload, range becomes 12000km

this means it can conveniently reach chad or Nigeria without stopping to refuel.

It requires just 6 crew to operate.

or

The russian cargo plane Ilyushin Il-76 (NATO designated "Candid"), a multi-purpose four-engine strategic airlifter designed by the Ilyushin design bureau. It was first planned as a commercial freighter in 1967, as a replacement for the Antonov An-12. It was designed for delivering heavy machinery to remote, poorly served areas of the USSR. Military versions of the Il-76 have seen widespread use in Europe, Asia and Africa, including use as an airborne refueling tanker or as a command center.

It requires just 5 crew to operate, has a higher operating altitude of 13000 meters but lower payload of 50tons max. the range is 4300km if its carrying maximum payload and thus will need to stop to refuel if it originated from Moscow.

Both planes have various variants. However Russia is the only country that uses both for military purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-124_Ruslan



Thus we can safely conclude the plane is Russian since the cargo is military hardware and its the Ilyushin Il-76 because 5 crew members were reportedly detained.

Attempted Spin

According to Reuters reports later came that the crew is French and the plane originated its flight from Bangui in the Central African Republic. Two helicopters were on board a bullet proof jeep and some other boxes

The plane will overfly Chad to get to Bangui!

Research shows the distance between CAR and Moscow is about 5600km, further than that to Nigeria as you can see in the map above. So we can safely dismiss it detoured to refuel at C.A.R. We also heard the Ndjamena airport was closed and that was why they had to land at Kano, the question remains, why fly to CAR if you were going to Chad?!

My Conclusion?

The only way that plane could have "accidentally" landed at Aminu Kano international airport is only if the destination was Kano in the first place. The story does not "gel"

What do you think?