Qatar plane in emergency landing in Lagos

Simon Ateba/Aviation correspondent

A major accident was averted on Saturday as a Qatar plane made an emergency landing on Saturday in Lagos, southwest Nigeria.

The passenger plane, flight QR592 with hundreds of passengers on board, was said to have hovered at the Lagos airport for close to an hour as its tyres lost pressure and refused to come out for landing.

The plane was coming from Doha, the Qatari capital, and had wanted to land at the Murtala Muahammed when the pilot radioed the control tower for an emergency.The firefighters, security operatives, the police, and Julius Berger equipment were brought in.

The plane eventually safely landed at about 1.05pm at the cargo area of the airport.

“The plane has landed safely,” said Harold Demuren, the head of Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority. “We lost one of the tyres.”

The aircraft landed at the cargo terminal of Murtala Mohammed International Airport and was then towed to an area where passengers were able to disembark, officials and an AFP reporter said.

Qatar Airways flight QR592 was travelling the regular Doha-Lagos route and reported the tyre problem to Nigerian airport authorities, said Demuren, who identified the aircraft as an Airbus A330.

He told AFP that no passengers were injured during the emergency landing and that one of the plane’s tyres had to be replaced. A mechanic at the airport said one of the plane’s left tyres was flat.

Three passengers who were on board told AFP that the crew had made no announcements about a mechanical problem during the flight.

“They landed safely. There was no problem. I didn’t notice any other thing,” said Raphael Ashala, 30, a Nigerian who was on his way back from a Doha business trip.

Emergency vehicles including fire trucks were on hand for the landing, the AFP correspondent said.

The airline’s online tracker said the flight arrived in Lagos at 2:29 pm (1329 GMT), but the plane touched down at least 30 minutes before that.

The website made no mention of any incidents during the journey, saying only that flight QR592 had “arrived.”

In June, a McDonnell Douglas-83 operated by Dana Air plunged into a neighbourhood near Lagos airport after reportedly suffering double engine failure. The crash killed all 153 passenger and crew as well as at least six people on the ground.