The flight which originated for Abuja was delivering the APC officials to Gombe for the inauguration of the state’s interim Executive Committee of the party.
Mr. Murtala Aliyu, the head of the delegation and the former Minister of State for Power and Steel, confirmed the incident to Premium Times in a telephone conversation, noted that relevant government agencies may be behind it.
“We had almost descended to Gombe Airport when the pilot informed us that there was a truck on the runway and he cannot land, he also told us that he does not have enough fuel to go back to Abuja,” Mr. Aliyu said.
The pilot had no option but to take the risk of taking an emergency landing at Bauchi Airstrip.
The spokesperson of Aviation agencies, Yakubu Datti, said the Airport of Gombe was closed for a routine operation to check fire tenders.
He added that the authorities “decided to shut down the Airport and run the trucks because there were no scheduled flights and the shutdown was just for a few hours.”
However, Mr. Aliyu faulted the claim of the aviation spokesperson, saying the authorities should have let the pilot know before he took off from Abuja.
“The pilot was in constant communication with the Control towers and there was no indication whatsoever that Gombe Airport was closed to traffic until we got there,” he said.
In his return, Mr. Datti said such problems arise because some of the planes being used for chatter service are only registered overseas and conduct ‘Kabukabu’ business in Nigeria.
“You never hear a scheduled flight have this sort of problems,” the spokesperson noted.
He further added that aviation authorities take issues of safety very seriously and the fire tender operations are ICAO requirements.
Mr. Aliyu informed the incident caused huge inconveniences for the delegation: they had to use vehicles from Bauchi back to Gombe to appear on the inauguration event. Moreover, APC officials had to stay the night in Bauchi, because the airstrip there had no facility for night flights.
No comments:
Post a Comment