Not less than 10 folks, together with the pilot, had been injured when a Boeing passenger airplane overran the runway whereas aborting takeoff from Senegal’s worldwide airport within the outskirts of Dakar on Thursday, the nation’s transport minister mentioned.
Air Senegal Flight HC301, which is operated by Transair, was carrying 79 passengers, two pilots and 4 cabin crew on an early morning flight from Blaise Diagne Worldwide Airport to Bamako, Mali, when it went off the runway, Malick Ndiaye, the minister of infrastructure and land and air transport, said in a statement posted on social media.
Emergency providers had been deployed to evacuate the passengers, and people who had been injured had been receiving medical care, Mr. Ndiaye mentioned.
Footage from social media and revealed by The Related Press confirmed passengers taking place emergency slides in the dead of night as one aspect of the plane was in flames. “Our airplane simply caught hearth,” wrote Cheick Siriman Sissoko, a musical artist from Mali, in a publish on Fb, The A.P. reported. He couldn’t be reached by phone afterward Thursday.
Mr. Ndiaye mentioned the reason for the incident was below investigation.
The Transair airplane, a Boeing 737-300, was an older mannequin manufactured in 1994. Boeing, which has come below intense scrutiny after a collection of accidents and malfunctions involving newer variations of the 737, referred questions in regards to the incident in Senegal to Transair.
“Carriers function and preserve their airplanes for upwards of 30 to 40 years,” Boeing mentioned in an emailed assertion.
Transair, which posted the minister’s assertion on its Fb web page, didn’t reply to an e-mail on Thursday. Air Senegal had not issued a press release on the incident.
The airport, which is greater than an hour’s drive from the middle of the capital, Dakar, opened in 2017. It shut down quickly on Thursday morning earlier than resuming operations within the afternoon.
