17 January 2008
Maputo — The Mozambique Airport Company (ADM) has denied any responsibility for an accident last Thursday night when a large bird was sucked into one of the engines of a Boeing 737 belonging to the private company Air Corridor.
The incident occurred at the airport in the northern city of Nampula, when the Air Corridor plane was preparing to take off on a scheduled flight to Maputo. The damage was such that the plane was grounded and the engine will have to be repaired in South Africa.
This Boeing was the only operational plane that Air Corridor possessed, since its second Boeing is undergoing maintenance. The company, the sole competitor of the state-owned Mozambique Airlines (LAM) on most domestic routes, will not be able to fly again until at least mid-February. It has been obliged to reimburse everyone who had bought tickets for flights during this period.
The Air Corridor management blamed ADM for the accident and demanded compensation. But ADM operational director Emanuel Chaves told reporters that ADM had taken all due security measures, as demanded by the International Civil Aviation Authority, and so could not be held responsible.
He argued that an airport could only he considered responsible for a collision between a plane and a bird, if it had not taken reasonable measures to keep birds away from the runway. But ADM, he said, had signed a memorandum with the Maputo Natural History Museum to study the behaviour of birds in the airports. Based on this study, the country's airports were ordered to remove from their premises all shrubs and tall grass where birds might nest.
Cited in Thursday's issue of the independent newssheet "Mediafax", Chaves said that when he visited Nampula in October he verified that within about 400 metres of the runway there are no shrubs at all.
Furthermore, 15 minutes before any takeoff or landing, airport vehicles inspect the runway for birds. The vehicles carry flashing lights to scare off birds.
The Air Corridor management had accused ADM of favouritism towards LAM. Chaves said such behaviour would make no sense, and he attributed Air Corridor's accusation to the "moments of pain" the company is going through.
Certainly it would make no economic sense for ADM to sabotage Air Corridor. Whenever a company ceases to use Mozambican airports, ADM loses large sums in passenger and landing fees.
"It was never part of ADM's philosophy to discriminate against any company ", said Chaves. "For people involved in aviation, security is not something used to benefit one company at the expense of another".
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
