The only thing more concerning than an emergency exit door falling off a plane during landing is when the airline blames passengers for it.
Dana Air is a regional airline in Nigeria. Despite having a motto of “The Smartest Way To Fly,” you may wish to consider other options. On a Dana Air domestic flight between Lagos and Abuja last week, dozens of passengers claimed the exit door of the MD-83 aircraft fell off upon landing.
Numerous passengers provided photographic and video evidence.
Flew Dana. Exit door was unstable throughout the flight. As we touched down it fell off. Scary stuff. pic.twitter.com/eDtTlNi2TZ
— Dr Ola Brown (@NaijaFlyingDr) February 7, 2018
Abeg
If there is a class action lawsuit against Dana for gross negligence and endangering the lives of passengers. I want in, I also was on that flight : 25d : The Door Panel was loose indicative of lack of maintenance. pic.twitter.com/TzDWnGboGJ
— Dapo (@DapoSanwo) February 7, 2018
Scary. Another airliner off my list.. pic.twitter.com/hYADIA08Xu
— CAB van der Vinne (@JoopvanderVinne) February 7, 2018
But Dana Air claims it was all a sinister plot to discredit it and physically impossible without human intervention.
We wish to state categorically that this could never have happened without a conscious effort by a passenger to open it.
By design, the emergency exit door of our aircraft are plug-type backed by pressure, which ordinary cannot fall off without tampering or conscious effort to open by a crew member or passenger.
One problem, though: pesky witnesses. One passengers sitting in the exit row, stated:
I was one foot away from the emergency exit door, so I could see the handle was popping out.
Another passenger stated–
The cabin crew tried to say a passenger pulled the hatch which everyone denied. They also tried to get us to stop taking videos or pictures.
An unsurprising cover-up.
CONCLUSION
This story from the airline that has the following banner on its homepage:
Our attention has been drawn to false claims by individuals parading themselves as recruitment agents for Dana Air thereby defrauding unsuspecting members of the public. Please beware as Dana Air will never ask applicants or job seekers to pay for employment. For information on careers and vacancies please send an email to vacancies@flydanaair.com.
“By design, the emergency exit door of our aircraft are plug-type backed by pressure”
This is irrelevant during landing.
I’m convinced that Dana airlines is cheaply passing the buck to an unnamed passenger simply because Dana believes/assumes that the flying public don’t know anything about aircraft or their operations. This is pathetic because no SANE (not psychologically or mentally compromised), educated, paying passenger would dare to actuate the opening mechanism of a main door or emergency for on an aircraft. The Nigerian public had not evolved to that unfortunate state (thankfully). From the passenger accounts, is easy to deduce that a maintenance oversight on this door’s looseness is the cause of the door’s “touchdown-assisted separation from the fuselage.