Murtala Muhahammed Airport, LagosFederal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has temporarily shut down the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, forcing one of the flights from Lome to be diverted back to the point of take off.
The international flights, including Ethiopian Airlines flight 3907, a Boeing 77F aircraft with registration number ETAVN, coming from Lome, Togo to Lagos, were stopped from landing because of the corpse of an unidentified man that was discovered on the airport run-way.
The discovery of the corpse, according to an aviation expert, is a major security breach that necessitated the closure of the airport, to enable the evacuation of the body.
A former Military Commandant of the airport, retired Group Captain John Ojikutu, said that there is a need to investigate how the unidentified man found his way into the sensitive area of the airport.
“The authorities need to investigate how the man got to the airport. Nobody can say much now; but he may have been knocked down by the wingspan or undercarriage of a jumbo jet but it is too early to say anything like that now.
“But we need to examine the issue of houses that have been built too close to the Lagos airport. The rule says no building should be situated less than six metres to the airport structure or fence. However, we have seen cases of people crossing the runway before.
“The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and FAAN need to investigate this to ascertain what really happened. They need to find out the flights that landed before that incident.
“The current airport perimeter fence is not a security fence and we need to do something about it,” he said.
it could not be immediately ascertained if the man was knocked down by an aircraft while taking off or landing on the runway.
The Police Public Relations Officer, Airport Command, Olayinka Ojelade, had confirmed the incident, saying that the command was alerted in the early hours of Thursday to evacuate the corpse from Runway 18R.
Source: Per Second News.
