A heavily-laden cargo jet arriving in heavy rain from Dubai overshot the tarmac at Lagos airport on Wednesday in the latest in a series of accidents to shake confidence in Nigeria’s aviation industry.
No-one was reported hurt in the drama but many flights were delayed as ground crews worked to unload the plane and drag it away from the runway.
”It is unfortunate that international flights cannot land since the incident happened this [Wednesday] afternoon,” said Adamu Abdullahi, spokesperson for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
”The DAS plane is fully loaded with goods. What we are doing now is to offload it so that we tow it away from the tarmac,” he said.
”We are doing everything possible to restore normal flights and to clear the backlog of passengers.”
DAS Air is a British-based cargo airline serving Africa and the Middle East.
Lagos airport’s main runway was already undergoing repairs at the time of the accident and with the second runway currently used by both its domestic and international terminals the accident triggered many cancellations.
A Nigerian passenger bound for Calabar, a city in southeastern Nigeria, said she had spent more than eight hours at the airport without being able to catch a flight.
”I am leaving the airport now for a hotel. I will return to the arport on Thursday to see if the situation has changed,” said Agbo Agede at 8pm (7pm GMT) as she made for her car to the hotel.
Last week an Air France jet arriving at the southern oil city of Port Harcourt with 196 passengers on board was damaged when it ran into a herd of cattle that had strayed onto the runway, killing several of them.
And in recent months at least three airliners operated by domestic carriers have been damaged in bumpy landings caused by faulty landing gear. – Sapa-AFP