Air Peace In Near-mishap In Illorin; Air Passengers Stranded

By Adesina Soyooye

For 30 hours and counting, Air passengers traveling into, or outside, Illorin Airport have been stranded.  There is no airport to use.

An Air Peace Aircraft which flew into the Airport from Abuja, 10am, Friday, was in a near-mishap. On landing, it lost one of  its rear tyres.   It burst, tore into shreds, and it took the Pilot’s experience

to bring the aircraft which wobbled and  shook dangerously to a halt.

Luckily, all the frightened passengers were evacuated to safety. Nobody was hurt.

But since the mishap on Friday, July the 23rd, the aircraft has not been evacuated from the runway which it effectively blocked.

The result is that no aircraft  can fly into, or out of the airport.

Neither FAAN nor the management of AirPeace has issued a statement on the incident at the time of writing this.

An airline passenger, Dr Olu Agunloye, reacting in frustration lamented: “It is shameful that FAAN and Airplane have not been able to clear the runway in over 27 hours.”

Airpeace, Nigeria’s largest and most successful private airline concern, began flying into Illorin Airport barely one month ago.