Passengers' horrifying shock as door falls off plane
Passengers have received a horrifying shock after the door of a plane fell off shortly after landing.
The Dana Air flight had just arrived in Abuja from Lagos, Nigeria, when the emergency exit door fell off, causing a “poof-like explosion”.
“The flight was noisy with vibrations from the floor panel. I noticed the emergency door latch was loose and dangling,” passenger Dapo Sanwo said, according to the BBC.
“When we landed and the plane was taxiing back to the park point, we heard a poof-like explosion, followed by a surge of breeze and noise. It was terrible.”
“The cabin crew tried to say a passenger pulled the hatch which everyone denied. They also tried to get us to stop taking videos or pictures.”
Scary. Another airliner off my list.. pic.twitter.com/hYADIA08Xu
— CAB van der Vinne (@JoopvanderVinne) February 7, 2018
One passenger, Igah Dagogo, told CNN that he noticed that the door was not properly latched before takeoff.
“I was one foot away from the emergency exit door, so I could see the handle was popping out,” Dagogo said.
“We informed one of the air hostesses who insisted that it was locked.”
Dagogo said that when the door fell, it almost hit a passenger.
“The man by the door had to shift because the door would have hit him. When he shifted the door now fell on the floor of the plane,” he said.
He added, “I wonder what would have happened if the door fell off midair.”
Ola Orekunrin was also onboard the flight and told CNN that she noticed the door had been “unstable” through the whole flight.
However, Dana Air denied the door incident was due to mechanical issues and instead pinned the responsibility on a “passenger”.
“We wish to state categorically that this could never have happened without a conscious effort by a passenger to open it,” the airline said in a statement.
The airline also claimed that when the aircraft was airbone, the door could not be “shaking” because it was “fully-pressurised”.
“A thorough inspection was however carried out on the said aircraft upon landing in Abuja by our engineers and a team from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, and no issue was reported. There was also no threat to safety at any point.
“A thorough investigation of the concerned passenger is ongoing.”
This is not the first time Dana Air has been under fire for safety issues with the airline crashing in 2012 and killing all 153 people on board.