Hundreds
of passengers today escaped death as Aero Contractors flight from Lagos to
Calabar was diverted to Port Harcourt due to what the Calabar Airport Manager,
Mr. Sani described as bad weather.
The
4pm flight which was supposed to land in Calabar by 5pm could not land after
coming low, according to eyewitnesses in Calabar and was later diverted to the
Port Harcourt airport to avert any danger.
While
some of the passengers who reached out to CrossRiverWatch alleged that the
divertion was due to navigational instrument failure, a staff of Aero who spoke
to our reporter as well as the Airport Manager debunked the claim and said it
was bad weather.
According
to the Aero staff who did not want to be named, “Yes, there was a small issue
that caused our plane not to land this evening. The weather was too bad and I
think the most reasonable thing to do was to land elsewhere. I think the bad
weather even extended to Uyo because of the rains so the pilot had to head for
Port Harcourt. It is in no way related to any navigational equipment.” said the
staff.
According
to Mr. Sani the Calabar Airport Manager, he told CrossRiverWatch that, “It has
been raining very heavily in Calabar for days now and it has affected
visibility badly which made the weather risky for landing. The pilot actually
intended to land like that but we thought it was not safe to do that since
visibility was not good, that is why he was directed to Port Harcourt.
“The
equipment in this airport are all in good shape. Some of them are even new
because renovation work in the airport is even still ongoing so there is no
issue about failure of equipment. If that was the case, we will tell you people
so that government can intervene and fix it but honestly the issue was weather
and not equipment related.” He said.
Cross River Watch
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