Date: 2019-05-03

Residents of Ilorin community area of Ilorin International Airport are now living in palpable fear following a trainee aircraft belonging to International Aviation College (IAC) which crashed landed late yesterday afternoon at the airport runway.

Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed who was said to be returning from his Abuja trip was also delayed yesterday for about three hours before arriving at the airport with his wife, Deaconess Omolewa Ahmed.

The Governor who had his convoyed stationed at the airport around 2:22pm waiting for his arrival from Abuja Airport had to wait until the airspace was reopened and the Governor's chartered aircraft landed the airport at exactly 5:35pm.

Also, Arik Air one of the commercial airlines at the airport landed at 5:45pm yesterday.

Vanguard reliably gathered that, the incident which happened on that fateful day saw the Diamond plane with registration No.5N BNH with two pilots onboard crashed landed though without any casualty.

It was gathered that, the plane was said to be experiencing a serious unexpected technical faults but that the pilot of the plane did not notice on time.

Sources close to the Aviation College told journalists on Thursday that, the ugly development had caused the back tyres of the aircraft to pull out when the pilot was trying to land on the runway

Vanguard however gathered that the development led the aircraft to crash landed unexpectedly.

A visit of our correspondent to the airport yesterday showed the staff of IAC including the rector and some of airport workers trying to evacuate the aircraft from the runway so that the airspace can be reopened for flight operations.

The damaged aircraft was later towed with a vehicle to the Aviation college before the airspace was reopened around 4:00pm for flight operations.

Contacted yesterday on the incident,. the rector of the Aviation College, Engineer Benedict Adeyileke refused to make comment at the time of filing this report.

Also, a telephone call to the Airspace Manager of Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) at the airport, Engineer Balogun Abiodun to speak on the incident did not yield positive result saying "I am not authorise to make any comment on the incident being a civil servant".