Air Peace
Air Peace aircraft was damaged yesterday at the Murtala Muhammed Airport domestic terminal when it was hit by a ground handling truck being managed by a ground handling company while passengers’ luggage was being loaded into the cargo hold.
The flight P4 7140 QUO STD 1100 heading to Uyo, Akwa Ibom boarded at 1037hrs had to abort take off when the incident happened, it was learnt that over 100 passengers on board the aircraft were disembarked and conveyed to the boarding gate following the incident.
“The aircraft which was scheduled to take off at 10:35 a.m was preparing for take off when the ground handling truck belonging to NAHCO hit the baggage hold forcing the aircraft to abort take off.”
According to the Corporate Communications Manager of Air Peace, Chris Iwarah said the door of the rear cargo hold of the aircraft was impacted and damaged in the incident. The aircraft, it added, had been declared unserviceable. The airline’s Uyo-bound passengers, the statement said, were rescheduled to fly later in the day.
The incident of ground handling equipment damaging aircraft is not new in the industry. The same Air Peace had in April this year had one of its aircraft grounded in Benin, Edo state when it was damaged by another ground handling truck. The development was blamed on negligence on the part of the driver of the truck, while stressing the need for training and retraining of the officials for safe operations
“Air Peace confirmed that officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) were already investigating the incident at the Lagos airport on Thursday”, the statement said
The airline said it deeply regretted the disruption of its Lagos-Uyo service and the delay the incident caused its passengers. It assured that arrangements had been made to take the affected passengers to their destinations.
