Barely 24 hours after the European Commission banned Med-View Airline from operating into its airspace over safety issues one of its four aircraft, a Boeing 737 with the registration number 5N-MAA has been grounded a y bird strike at Maiduguri airport.
A source close to the airline told our correspondent on Friday night that the incident occurred a few seconds after the aircraft took off from Maiduguri en route to Abuja and Lagos.
The pilot immediately made an air return to base and disembarked all the passengers who were later told to return to their various homes while the airline makes arrangement for a new aircraft to convey the passengers.
SaharaReporters learnt there are over 100 passengers on board the aircraft at the time of the incident.
Our sources stated that the Managing Director of the airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole had been informed of the incident and its engineers would this morning leave Lagos for Maiduguri to know the extent of the damage to the aircraft.
The source, however, said that one of the two engines of the aircraft was badly damaged by the incident.
The source stated that just three aircraft is remaining in the fleet of the airline and that flight operation will be impacted by the latest crisis.
It is not clear if the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has been notified of the incident.
Med-View has its first Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday in Lagos and by Thursday, European Commission named the airline as among 180 others that failed safety test.
It would be recalled that DANA Air in April had a similar incident with its MD 83 aircraft with the registration number 5N-SRI two weeks ago.
The aircraft had departed Lagos for Port Harcourt at 11am but made an air return back to Lagos immediately when it was hit by birds upon take-off.
