Plane conveying Pilgrims crash lands in Niger

A near-tragic incident occurred last night at the Minna International Airport as a plane conveying over 600 pilgrims returning from the 2019 annual pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia crash-landed.

Though no one was injured or died in the incident, however, the passengers were all in panic. The aircraft said to be a Boeing 744 with registration number 5N/ DBK, skidded off the runway after developing a  technical fault in one of its tyres.

The Nation reported that the Public Relations Officer of the Niger State Pilgrims Welfare Board, Hajia Hassana Isah confirmed the incident but did not give further details.

A Twitter user who revealed that his cousin was among the passengers of the aircraft, said the incident occurred because the control tower was not ready to receive them.

“Gisting with my couz who just came back from Saudi Arabia (Hajj). So they crash landed last night at minna airport cause the control tower was not ready to receive them or so, apparently, there was no light (Power) at the airport. Niger Power state.” he tweeted.

It was further gathered that five officials of the Accident Bureau of Investigation from Lagos went into a closed-door meeting with the management of the airport, after arriving at the facility and inspecting the partly damaged aircraft.

A senior official of the airport also revealed that that the airport would have been razed down if the aircraft which crash-landed had caught fire. According to him, the airport has no fire fighting vehicles.

“The fire that would have followed would have spread to all parts of the airport because we don’t have fire fighting vehicles in this airport”, a senior Official of the airport said.