IN spite of the rushed manner of restoring the operational license of some of Nigeria’s domestic airlines, experts and individual Nigerians who recently nearly had a tragic experience have continued to speak out that aviation authorities in Africa’s largest nation still have a lot of structural work to do in order to put the industry on a solid footing worthy of the money so far spent, and human resources thus far engaged.
A Nigerian resident in Houston, Texas, in the United States returning to the country on New Year Eve, who simply identified herself as Tina, told sharpedgenews.com that the sudden development of a mechanical fault by an airplane operate by Aero Contractors on a scheduled flight from Lagos to Owerri, and the carefree conduct and complete neglect of senior and disabled citizens by the crew, afforded a rare opportunity to understanding the agony and psychological torture that often precede the traumatic death of many Nigerians in plane crashes.
Tina, who originally from Nigeria but now a naturalized American married to Finnish citizen, identified herself as a member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, said that she and her aunt boarded the Aero Contractor plane from the domestic wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.
According to her, they had been airborne for just twenty-five minutes when the aircraft, the flight defects of which she did not provide, started convulsing with strange engine noises.
Tina said that the entire crew of the plane scampered into the cockpit from where the pilot later announced that the flight would be diverted to Lagos instead of making it all the way to its original Owerri destination.
“The pilot urged us to pray if we could, as we now have just one operational engine and that it was not unusual to have such problems,” Tina said.
She also said that in this blood chilling incident happened on December 18 2012, her aunt who sitting next to her wept profusely, thinking the end had come.
Tina said that the Aero Contractor crew abandoned each passenger, including the old and the disabled, to their fate. The flight allegedly made it back to Lagos on one functional engine and touched down at the international wing of the same airport where it earlier departed, and the passengers who were held for several hours were later guided to another plane for the scheduled trip to Owerri.
Tina said that all the passengers were deliberately hidden from the usual crowd of touts and passengers at the airport in order to forestall panic and fear.
“I felt violated at the way we were handled, as if we had committed crimes. They made sure we did not communicate with other people. We were held for hours.”
Sharpedgenews.com, however, learned that at least three elderly people decided against embarking on the subsequent journey facilitated with the provision of another aircraft.
The badly shaken Tina said that in spite of the glaring ordeal, some of the Aero Contractor officials idiotically maintained that “there was nothing wrong with the plane. It would have made it in one piece,” – a sloppy attitude that accentuates why Nigerian travelers often die in the hands lackadaisical aviation officials.
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