New York-bound Ghana Airways tongues out flames

....stowaway found in delicate compartment
Accra, Feb. 28, GNA - A nerve-racking technical fault trace on a New York bound Ghana Airways flight in the early hours of Saturday led to the retrieval of a young man believed to be stowing away in a delicate compartment beneath the cockpit, airline officials and witnesses said.

The boy, believed to be between 19 and 20 years old, was found holding a flash light in the compartment and might have been scuttling his way up the cockpit. He was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a t-shirt and clutching a bag containing a few personal items including a packet of biscuits.

GH Flight 150 with about 240 passengers was scheduled to take off at the Kotoka International Airport at 2330 hours to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

It all began at about 0115 hours, when flames of fire were seen tonguing out at the tail engine of the DC10, as the pilot was warming up the engines in preparation for the taxiway.

The flames and the thick cloud of smoke that followed caused panic among scores of worn-out and anxious relatives, including a GNA reporter, who had been waiting on the upper terrace of the arrival hall to witness the take off of the flight which was already behind its estimated departure time by almost two hours.

"We saw the flames in two successive sparks, followed by thick smoke. It was terrifying," the GNA reporter recalled, saying, what confused many witnesses was the fact that the plane continued to turn and headed towards the taxiway despite the sparks a few minutes earlier. This made many among the waiting crowd to believe that the pilot might not have been aware of the incident.

The GNA reporter said "with a degree of uncertainty surrounding the fate of the aircraft and the passengers," he made a distressed call to the Civil Aviation control tower and informed the duty officer about the sparks of flames seen few minutes earlier.

The control tower duty officer promptly responded and confirmed that he had also seen the flames and that he had already informed the pilot about the situation. "It is true I also saw the fire and I have duly informed the pilot. I believe he's going to work around it."

The reporter said he noticed that the pilot had aborted the take off, while he was still speaking with the control tower.

"We also saw from afar two vehicles - a minibus and a blinking van - drive towards the aircraft. More vehicles followed with some officials, who I guess, were traffic personnel and technical men."

After about 10-15 minutes of exchanges between the occupants of the vehicles and the aircraft crew, the plane withdrew to its original packing lot and after a frantic search in the compartment beneath the cockpit, the stowaway was pulled out. The plane took off finally at 0230 hours, some 30 minutes after the boy's removal.

The discovery of the boy in what some airline officials described at as a "delicate compartment" further raised the anxiety of witnesses including some airline officials who held that the pilot should have allowed passengers to disembark to enable the aircraft to be examined more thoroughly.

"If I had any relatives or friends aboard this aircraft, I would not have allowed them to stay on and continue the journey in this manner.

The pilot should have spent more time than this to check the aircraft for the sake of security and safety," an official told the GNA. It was however unclear whether it was the presence of the stowaway in the compartment and perhaps his attempts to open his way into the cockpit that caused the flames at the tail engine.

Sources close to the airline said the boy might have sneaked into the plane while it was parked in the hangar earlier in the day. It was also believed that he would have been crushed to death by the undercarriage wheels shortly after takeoff.

Management has promised to probe the circumstances under which the boy got into the plane's compartment, saying it was too early to confirm whether the act was committed with the connivance of some ground workers. Meanwhile the boy, who was later handed over to the police refused to cooperate during initial questioning at the airport.

"He is unwilling to cooperate and has refused to tell us about himself and how he got to that compartment of the aircraft. All he did was to mention some foreign sounding name. He also said he his mother was in Accra. That's all, but we believe he would open up sooner than later," the official said, adding that "his ascent is like that of a Liberian."