An incident involving two airplanes at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport has sparked uproar over what could have been a tragedy.
According to Moina Spooner, a journalist with The Conversation, both planes almost rammed into each other on JKIA’s runway as one was landing and the other taking off.
Taking to her X (formerly Twitter) account, Spooner who was onboard, shared her experience that left her scared.
Her plane was in the process of descending and almost touching down when it suddenly took off at a sharp angle leaving passengers shocked, scared and confused.
“After the plane was high enough and leveled out, the pilot informed us that he had to because there was another plane on the runway,” Spooner narrated.
Reports indicate that the plane on the ground was headed to Rwanda and was in the process of a take-off just as the descending plane was landing. Both planes were just about 1000 meters apart.
Consequently, the media personality called for a thorough investigation into the issue to prevent similar problems arising in the future.
The incident has sparked outrage from Kenyans who demand an explanation from the international airport, as to how two planes could have been scheduled to be on the runway at the same time.
Additionally, questions have been asked over Flight Control’s role in the confusion and what actions they took to rectify the situation.
However, by the time of this publication, neither JKIA nor the Kenya Airports Authority(KAA) had issued a statement on the matter.
Unfortunately, this is not the first alarming incident that the airport has been caught up in.
Barely two weeks ago, JKIA experienced a major power blackout lasting about two hours that left passengers stranded and in darkness.
"Following a nationwide power blackout, one of the generators serving JKIA's T1A and Parking Silo failed to start, resulting in a power outage in a section of the airport," KAA explained at the time.
These incidents have raised concerns about the airport’s competency particularly because it is the largest and busiest airport in East Africa.
