Another air disaster was averted on Monday, the tyres of an aircraft belonging to Dana Airlines caught fire shortly before take off, causing the prompt evacuation of all the 50 passengers, who had already boarded for the trip.
The airplane was scheduled to take off from Port Harcourt International Airport enroute Lagos, when the incident occurred, after initial delays in which the airline operators had reportedly told the passengers that their flight would be delayed due to bad weather.
However, the passengers, believed that they were lied to, because the operators were battling the technical problems that resulted in the fire rather than bad weather, with one of the passengers posting on the social media how they had to practically “run out of the airplane,” as a result.
It was also gathered that no life was lost and no passenger was injured as first responders including operatives of the fire service at the airport moved in to control the situation.
In a statement entitled: Press statement on Port Harcourt Incident of 2/5/22, on Tuesday morning, Dana Air spokesman, Kingsley Ezenwa, said the aircraft had been grounded pending the conclusion of their investigations.
It partly read: “Our aircraft with registration number 5N JOY operating flight 9J 344 from Port Harcourt to Lagos on 2nd of May 2022, was set to take off when the pilot in command noticed an anomaly which he queried with the Air Traffic Control before embarking on a ramp return in line with our strict safety operating procedures
“However, the impact on the brakes as a result of the aborted take off affected the aircraft tyres which sparked off while the aircraft was taxiing to repark.
“All 50 passengers onboard the aircraft disembarked safely and our maintenance team have immediately grounded the aircraft pending the conclusion of their investigations. Once again, we sincerely apologize to all the passengers on the flight for the inconveniences caused due to the eventual cancellation of the flight.”
Recall that in 2012, a Dana Air Md-83 aircraft crashlanded at Iju area shortly before reaching the Lagos airport, killing all the 153 passengers on board, at a period the Nigerian civil airspace was experiencing what appeared an epidemic in air disasters.