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Minister, 400 pilgrims escape air mishap
By Oguwike Nwachuku
Group
News Editor, Lagos
About 400 Nigerian
pilgrims, including Foreign Affairs Minister Olu Adeniyi, are stranded in
Larnaca, Cyprus after escaping an air mishap at the Cyprus International
Airport on Monday night.
The pilgrims are
mainly from Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River States and Abuja. They were
abandoned at the airport after the Boeing aircraft they were travelling on was
forced to return to the tarmac following a loud explosion that rocked its rear
during take-off.
One of its rear panels
fell off as it gathered momentum to fly, causing a great stir in the cabin as
passengers and crew members surged forward fearing a bomb explosion.
The Star Airline craft
left Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital at 8:30 p.m. on Monday for Lagos but had a
stop over in Larnaca at 9:15 p.m. to pick Adeniyi who was waiting to join the
pilgrims back home.
It taxied onto the
runway at exactly 10:15 p.m. and had barely left the ground when a loud
explosion was heard from the rear, rocking it and sending panic-stricken
passengers and crew members surging towards the cockpit.
Crew members burst
into the cockpit to alert the pilots, who
returned the aircraft to the runway and back to the tarmac, fearing it was under terrorist attack. The craft was still
sitting on the tarmac at press time.
Engineers discovered
subsequently that one of the rear panels of the ageing craft had dropped off.
They confirmed that if the plane had been airborne, passengers and crew members
alike would have been sucked out of it.
Adeniyi went back to
his hotel, shocked and dazed. The pilgrims said he neither addressed them nor
returned to the airport as at 5:00 p.m. The crew members, mostly Jordanians,
also abandoned the pilgrims.
The General Manager of
Travel Aviation Tourism Limited (TAT), the travel agency handling the trip,
Goldsten Israel, an Israeli, could not come up with immediate plans to get the
passengers back to Nigeria.
He was said to have
promised them alternative arrangements but three times before dusk the
following day he failed to keep his promise. He did not make provision either
for transit visas, the pilgrims claimed.
They were still at the
airport at 6:50 p.m. (Nigerian time) on Tuesday, without taking their bath and
not having access to their luggage trapped in the aircraft. That was the last
time we had contact with them in Cyprus.
It was learnt that
officials of TAT left the pilgrims at the airport because they did not want to
incur additional expenses keeping them in an hotel.
Efforts made on
Tuesday to speak to officials of the Pilgrims Board in Abuja yielded little
result. But one of its employees, who did not want his name in print, said the
agency has received information on the development. He could not say what the
authorities are doing about it.
Reports at 6 p.m. on
Tuesday indicated that the pilgrims had become restive when it was obvious that
no immediate attention was being given to them by the authorities.
It took the
intervention of an employee of the Nigerian embassy, who appeared latter, to
appeal to them to exercise patience, before frayed nerves were calmed.
Part of their
grievance is that the aircraft they were
traveling on was too old and without air conditioning facilities. They
were ready to vent their frustration on the TAT manager. The aircraft ia said
to be a cargo plane converted for
passenger use.
Information received later indicated that another aircraft
had been secured to take the first batch of the stranded passengers home, but
as at 6:30pm, they claimed the aircraft had not arrived. Officials of TAT kept
assuring them that they would be airlifted that night.
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