Azman Air flight from Lagos to Maiduguri en-route Abuja was on Thursday forced to make air return when the aircraft landing gear refused to retract after takeoff.
THISDAY learnt that the pilot explained to passengers that the gear pin was not removed before the aircraft took off to enable the landing gear to retract so he had to return to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos so that the pin would be removed.
The 10:30 flight, which took off promptly returned to base after 10 minutes and was recertified to takeoff again few minutes later after the gear pin was removed, but some of the passengers who were petrified by the incident decided to suspend their trip.
Eyewitness told THISDAY, “Azman Air to Maiduguri en-route Abuja made air return to Lagos 10 minutes into flight. Pilot explained that the nose gear did not return. Upon landing in Lagos, the engineer was called in. The pilot explained that a pin was not removed, causing the nose gear not to retract. He said the issue had, however, been resolved. But some passengers felt psychologically unable to continue with the flight and insisted on disembarking.
A pilot type rated on Boeing 737, the aircraft type operated by Azman Air, explained to THISDAY that what happened was that when the aircraft is on ground the gear pin is inserted on the landing gear, also known as nose wheel, so that it would not collapse but this is done most often when the aircraft is on over night parking; not when it is on turnaround.
He said that it was due to negligence that the engineer who certified the aircraft for flight and the pilot who ought to carry out final inspection before operating the aircraft, did not notice that the gear pin was not removed.
He also explained that there is usually a red flag placed on the aircraft to indicate that the gear pin has not been removed but this seemed to have been ignored by the pilot who took off without removing the pin.
“The maintenance personnel should have removed the pin. The pilot in command of the flight should have checked the red flag. The pilot ought to have seen it. I think this is a problem with the airline. This is underlying safety issue with the airline maintenance. Accident, you know, is a chain reaction, which follows series of incidents. And this is happening after the airline came back from suspension. So there is systemic problem with the airline,” the pilot told THISDAY.
The General Manager, Public Affairs, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Sam Adurogboye confirmed the incident to THISDAY but said that he would not speak on it because it was air return but assured that the regulatory authority would investigate the incident.
“We always investigate incidents but we don’t speak to the media about air return but we carry out investigation on any incident in order to be on the side of caution and safety,” he said.
In March this year NCAA suspended Azman Air due to series of incidents that regulatory authority said threatened safety, which include the fact that on 11th February 2021, Azman Air flight AZM 2318 operated with Boeing 737-500 aircraft with registration 5N-SYS departing Kaduna for Lagos. During take-off, a component of the aircraft was observed to have fallen off the aircraft and Air Traffic Control (ATC) notified the Captain, who elected to continue the flight to Lagos. Upon arrival in Lagos, the Captain failed to make entry in the aircraft technical logbook,” the authority had said.
But following the execution of safety recommendations by the airline, the satisfied regulatory authority lifted the suspension of the domestic carrier.
