Based on the report in some national dailies today about the
flight conveying the Nigeria Under 23 soccer team to their camp in Banjul, The
Gambia, Arik Air said the aircraft in question did not loose engine or tyre. Arik
Air through a statement said, “the stories in Monday’s dailies about a
purported incident involving Arik Air’s Sunday Accra-Banjul flight which had
the national U-23 team on board painted grossly erroneous pictures of the
flight.
We will like to state for the records that the U-23 team and
other passengers on board the aircraft were never in danger of an air accident.
Against the reports in the dailies, none of the aircrafts in question lost a
tyre on landing in Accra and neither did any of the planes lose an engine. The
facts are as follow:
The aircraft that was conveying the team to Banjul had a
stopover in Accra, Ghana. On ground Accra, the Captain, while on routine walk
around the aircraft as part of the airline’s safety procedure, noticed that one
of the tyres had a low pressure (not flat). Instead of keeping the team in
Accra longer than necessary, we had to deploy another aircraft that was on a
night-stop in Accra to take the team to Banjul. The Captain of this aircraft
was airborne when he had to make an air return due to a gear pin in-situ.
However, our standard operating procedure required the aircraft to be
re-certified by our maintenance partner, Lufthansa Technik before it could
continue with the flight to Banjul.”
“We then had to fly
in Lufthansa engineers from Lagos to change the low pressure wheel on the
original operating aircraft for it to fly the team and other passengers to
Banjul. The other aircraft were also examined and released back to service.
The safety of passengers is paramount in our operations and
we will not compromise this for anything.
The Nigeria Football Federation has already issued a
statement to correct the erroneous impression that the team nearly had an air
crash”- the airline further explained.
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