301 passengers escape death on British Airways
By Kenneth Ehigiator, Jimoh Babatunde and Daniel Eteghe
No fewer than 301 passengers escaped death in Tamarasset, Algeria, weekend, following a technical problem suffered by one of the engines of British Airways flight 74 which was conveying them to London from Lagos.
The hapless passengers are currently stranded in the Algerian city, as the airline makes desperate efforts to send another plane to evacuate them to London.
The plane, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, took off at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, at midnight Saturday and was already two and half hours in flight when the pilot discovered a fault in one of the engines and shut it down.
Although the aircraft had three other engines still functioning, the crew diverted it to Tamarasset, Algeria, declared an emergency landing and eventually brought the plane down safely.
Confirming the development, BA said in a statement issued in Lagos yesterday that there were neither death nor injuries in the aborted flight.
BA said in the statement: “The BA74 from Lagos to London diverted into Tamanrasset airport in Algiers at 2.30am, GMT, this morning with a technical fault. The B747-400 is full with 301 passengers and 16 crew members.
“The fault is technical and due to an equipment cooling exhaust valve. A replacement B747-400 is being sent to Algiers to pick the customers up and drop engineers off to fix the fault. This should be done within a matter of hours.
“The original aircraft has more Club World seats than the replacement which will mean downgrades for a number of people.
“Customers are being kept on the plane until the replacement aircraft arrives. However they can go to the terminal building to stretch their legs
if they want.
“They cannot leave the terminal building as visas are required for entry to Algiers. The airfield is very safe and there are no threats to the aircraft.
“Terry Hernandez, BA s local airport manager for Algiers is assisting with coordinating the flights.
“Air Algerie fly regularly into Tamarasset airport and have been exceptionally helpful to Terry and the operations’ team.
“The replacement flight, BA9153P is scheduled to depart Heathrow at 12.15pm (GMT), arriving at Tamanrasset at 4.45pm (GMT).
The airline apologised to the stranded passengers over the inconvenience caused by the aborted flight.
The airline experienced a similar incident in Kano about two years ago after its Boeing 777 plane aborted its flight from Abuja to London in Kano due to technical problems.
In the same manner, it took the deployment of another plane from London to get some of the passengers to London, while some others were checked into a KLM flight from Kano.
