A major catastrophe was averted on Monday night after a Dana aircraft which was fully loaded and about to take to take off from the Port Harcourt International Airport runway caught fire.
One of the lucky passengers identified as Rich kid, took to social media to share the video while expressing displeasure over the incident.
According to him, the airline officials were trying to cover up the near tragedy saying ‘they’re lying to us.”
He added that they had to run out of the plane due to the fire which was put off immediately.
A spokesman Dana told Peoples Gazette, the pilot took immediate safety procedures and helped passengers disembark calmly, avoiding any injuries.
Dana Air has seen its fair share of crashes and near crashes in Nigeria:
- On 3 June 2012, a Dana Air McDonnell Douglas MD-83 operating as Flight 0992 crashed into a two-story building at Iju Railway, Ishaga, a suburb of Lagos. All 153 people on the aircraft were killed. Following the crash, all flights by Dana Air were halted by Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
- On 7 February 2018, a Dana Air flight landed in Abuja and was taxiing on the runway when one of the emergency exit doors fell off. No casualties resulted from the incident. Passengers claimed that the door rattled throughout the flight. A spokesperson for the airline, however claimed that the door could not have fallen off without a conscious effort by a passenger. The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority instituted an investigation into the incident to determine what exactly happened.
- On 20 February 2018, a Dana Air MD-83 with registration 5N-SRI veered off the runway at Port-Harcourt international airport during a night landing. Source: Wikipedia
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