Two Boeing 737 passenger planes were involved in accidents within a matter of hours of each other on Thursday, with one plane’s tire bursting during landing in Turkey, while another plane skidded off the runway in Senegal.
A Boeing 737-3 plane carrying 85 people skidded off a runway at the airport in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, injuring 10 people, according to the transport minister, an airline safety group and footage from a passenger that showed the aircraft on fire.
“Our plane just caught fire,” wrote Malian musician Cheick Siriman Sissoko in a post on Facebook that showed passengers jumping down the emergency slides at night as flames engulfed one side of the aircraft. In the background, people can be heard screaming.
Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye said the Air Sénégal flight operated by TransAir was headed to Bamako, in neighbouring Mali, late Wednesday with 79 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew.
The injured were being treated at a hospital, while the others were taken to a hotel to rest. Boeing referred a request for comment to the airlines.
Also on Thursday, 190 people were safely evacuated from a plane in Turkey after one of its tires burst — “a failure of the nose landing gear” — during landing at a southern airport, Turkey’s transportation ministry said. No one was hurt.
The Boeing 737-800, belonging to Turkey-based Corendon Airlines, stopped safely on the runway after landing at Gazipasa airport near the Mediterranean coastal town of Alanya, the company said. The plane, which carried 184 passengers and six crew members, was on a flight from Cologne, Germany.
Corendon Airlines denied Turkish media reports that the aircraft had landed on its nose. Turkey’s Transport and Infrastructure Ministry reported damage to the plane’s front gear but did not provide details.
The runway was not damaged, but flights were diverted to the nearby Antalya airport while the aircraft was being removed.
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It was the third incident involving a Boeing airplane this week. On Wednesday, a Boeing 767 cargo aircraft belonging to FedEx Express made an emergency landing at Istanbul Airport after its front landing gear failed. No one was injured and the crew safely evacuated the aircraft.
The company has been under intense pressure since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. The Federal Aviation Administration in February gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to fix quality problems and meet safety standards for building planes after the accident.
The incident has raised scrutiny of Boeing to the highest level since two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. About a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the second crash have been pushing the U.S. government to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement.
In April, a Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, testified at a congressional hearing that the company had taken manufacturing shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible that could lead to jetliners breaking apart.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
