Over 500 Pilgrims Escape Death As Max Air Crash Lands At Minna Airport
About 550 pilgrims who performed this years’ Hajj in Saudi Arabia from Niger state, escaped death by the whiskers on Saturday when, Max Air airlifting the pilgrims back home was involved in a near crash incident at the Minna International Airport .
The incident which occurred at about 5 am, Saturday had the aircraft, a Boeing 744 with registration number, 5N/DBK carrying about 550 returning pilgrims suddenly developing technical fault as it was about landing.
Eye witness account told journalists that the pilot had struggled to stabilize the plane before he managed to make forceful landing, a development the source said caused damaged to one of the plane’s four engines.
The aircraft is said to have damaged some facilities at the airport when it finally Landed as it skidded off the runway creating shock and panic among passengers, especially first time air travellers, the source said.
Though no life was lost, it was gathered that most of the passengers were in shock and had to hurriedly disembark from the plane immediately the door was opened.
“I have never seen this type of thing in my life, only God saved us from what would have been a disaster and the worst is that the airport does not have equipment to manage any emergency situation”, one of the passengers was quoted as saying.
A senior Airport officer on the condition of anonymity told our correspondent, “The fire that would have followed would have spread across airport facilities because we don’t have standby fire fighting vehicles in this airport”.
To ascertain the level of damage, our correspondent gathered that five officials from the Accident Bureau of Investigations, Lagos had visited Minna and immediately inspected the partly damaged aircraft after which they went into a closed door meeting.
Public Relations Officer of the Niger State Pilgrims Welfare Board, Hajia Hassana Isah when contacted confirmed the accident saying, “It was a technical fault, though we are yet to be adequately briefed by the experts on what happened but the place landed successfully”.
Hajia Hassana Isah however, said the development would not affect the return journey of the over 2, 000 pilgrims still waiting to be airlifted back home from Saudi Arabia as she assured that all the pilgrims would be successfully brought back.
Several attempts made to communicate with officials of Max Air Airline to speak on the issue proved abortive as they were said to be at a meeting as at the time of filing this report.
