Exclusive: Passengers escape death as Abuja bound Aero Contractors plane develops fault mid air

 

Many passengers escaped death on Monday as a major plane crash was averted. An Aero Contractors air plane was forced to return to the Murital Mohammed Air port in Lagos.

 

 

 

 

The Aero Contractors flight 119 which took off from Lagos at 5.45pm and was Abuja bound could not complete the journey.

 

 

 

 

Trouble started 20 minutes into the flight when suddenly, the plane  started experiencing faulty engine.

 

 

 

 

According to one of the passengers who narrated his ordeals to nigeriastandardng.com, shortly after the plane took off, the plane engine stated making strange disturbing sound.

 

 

 

 

The passenger disclosed that when the sound persisted, a pilot who simply identified himself as Bukky announced to passengers that the plane would not be going ahead with the journey because the plane had developed technical faults while still mid-air.

 

 

 

 

The pilot further told the passengers that, the plane would return to Lagos where their engineers were waiting to check what was wrong with it.

 

 

 

 

The plane therefore returned to Lagos and landed at the Lagos Airport at exactly 6.27pm.

 

 

 

 

Immediately the plane touched down, many passengers who were seriously worried and had started panicking started shouting for joy which some of them broke into praise songs, other were seen jumping, dancing and praying to God for sparing their lives.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, a mild drama had ensued earlier in Lagos when passengers who were earlier scheduled for a 10am flight on the same plane and had already boarded the plane were ordered to disembark from the plane.

 

 

 

 

The pilot who was supposed to fly the plane had vehemently refused to take off even after passengers had boarded.

 

 

 

 

The pilot cited technical faults and insisted that he was not going to fly the faulty plane.

 

 

 

 

As a result of this, the passengers were left stranded for more than several hours.

 

 

 

 

The lucky passengers blamed the management of the Airline, Aero Contractors, accusing them of incompetence and lack of regard to human lives.

 

 

 

They questioned why the management would still insist on making use of the faulty plane which had earlier been reported by a pilot as not fit for flying in the evening of the same day without resolving the technical issues.

 

 

 

As at the time of filing this report, the management of the Airline declined comment on the incident.