The Boeing-made jet caught fire and veered off the runway, forcing passengers to escape
ONE Boeing The 737-300 was carrying a 737-300 carrying 85 people slid off the runway at Senegal’s capital airport, injuring 10 people.
“Our plane just caught fire,” Malian musician Cheick Siriman Sissoko wrote in a post on Facebook shows passengers jumping down emergency slides at night as flames engulf the side of the plane at Dakar airport. In the background, people screaming could be heard.
Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye said the Air Senegal flight operated by TransAir was headed to Bamako, neighboring Mali, late Wednesday with 79 passengers, two pilots and four crew. The airport reopened Thursday morning after closing overnight.
The injured are being treated at the hospital, while others were taken to the hotel to rest. Boeing has sent requests for comment to the airlines.
This is the third incident involving Boeing aircraft this week. Also on Thursday, 190 people were safely evacuated from the plane in Türkiye after one of its tires blew out upon landing at a southern airport, Türkiye’s transport ministry said.
The company has been under enormous pressure since being shut down exploded from the Boeing 737 Max on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a hole in the plane. The Federal Aviation Administration in February gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to fix quality problems and meet safety standards for building the plane after the crash.
The incident has raised scrutiny of Boeing to its highest level since two Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people. About a dozen passenger relatives The person who died in the second crash prompted the U.S. government to reinstate criminal fraud charges against the company by determining that Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 settlement.
In April, Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour, testified at a congressional hearing that the company was taking production shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible, which could have resulted in the jets breaking down.
The Aviation Safety Network, which tracks aviation accidents, described the plane as a Boeing 737-38J. The network posted photos of the damaged plane in a grass field, surrounded by firefighting foam, on X, formerly known as Twitter. According to photos, an engine appeared to have broken off and a wing was also damaged.
ASN is part of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group that aims to promote safe air travel and track accidents.
