The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has frown at the alleged sensational report making the rounds that an aircraft belonging to Air Peace B737-500 with Registration Mark 5N-BQR was involved in a crash in Ilorin Friday 23 July, 2021.
This is coming on the heels of a report on a national daily that reported that an Airpeace aircraft crashed on landing at the Illorin airport on Friday the 23rd.
While urging their media partners to inculcate professionalism and avoid false news which will harm their blossoming reputation, the Authority in a statement signed by its General Manager, Public Affairs, Sam Adurogboye categorically states that, there is no air accident in Nigeria involving Air Peace or any airlines.
As a matter of fact, he says, aircraft which departed from Abuja successfully landed in Ilorin. It only experienced tyre burst in the course of taxing.
The statement adds that, “All the 66 passengers and 6 crew members onboard were disembarked without any issues whatsoever on the same day being the 23rd of July, 2021”.
“NCAA is committed to ensure safe and secure air transport in Nigeria and will stop at nothing towards ensuring our over eight (8) years of zero accident, no fatality in scheduled flight operations continues”.
The Authority wishes to enjoin the travelling public to disregard such false and reckless presentation.
Corroborating the NCAA, Airpeace Management says, the reported crash by a section of the media and online never happened, adding that, the reports misrepresented and exaggerated the facts.
“For the records, no such thing happened. We can confirm that the aircraft in question landed safely but had a minimal tyre burst while taxing. This debunks all the mischievously headlined reports circulating online, which should be disregarded”.
“Our aircraft neither crashed nor crash landed in illorin or in any place for that matter. This kind of sensationalism is bad and was intended to cause panic in the minds of the flying public”.
It adds that, “was duly reported to the authorities and passengers disembarked seamlessly. The tyres have, however, been fixed and aircraft is intact. We condemn sensational publication of falsehood”.
On the part of the accident investigation body, the Accident Investigation Bureau, AIB says, their Safety investigators did an evaluation of the occurrence and decided NOT to investigate and the plane has been released to the Operator (Air Peace).
“We enjoin all media practitioners to verify every information before going to press”.
