Louis Ibah
Tragedy was averted yesterday when a Dana aircraft numbered 9J0363, flying from Abuja to Port Harcourt crash-landed at the Port Harcourt International Airport.
Spokeswoman for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu told aviation reporters late Tuesday that the incident was suspected to have been caused by a heavy rain, which was accompanied by strong wind and storm in Port Harcourt.
“No casualty was recorded, as all passengers on board were safely evacuated,” she said.
Two weeks ago, the same Dana flight had its door blown open while landing.
Recall that on Sunday, 3 June 2012, an aircraft belonging to Dana Air, which took off from Abuja, crashed into a furniture works and printing press building in the Iju-Ishaga neighbourhood of Lagos, killing all 153 people on board and 10 more on the ground.
The aircraft was a twin-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-83, registered in Nigeria as 5N-RAM, built in 1990 and flew for Alaska Airlines until 2007, and was sold to another airline before being acquired by Dana Air in February 2009.
The aircraft was said to have accumulated more than 60,000 hours of total flight time since, with over 55,000 and 26,000 hours of total flight time before the crash. According to reports, the last maintenance on the aircraft was performed on June 1, 2012, two days before the accident.