Air disaster averted today as IRS aircraft makes emergency landing

Another air disaster was averted this afternoon when an IRS Aircraft made an emergency landing in Kaduna. A Fokker 28 plane, carrying 89 passengers from Lagos to Kaduna, developed hydraulic problems few minutes before landing at the Kaduna airport. The aircraft's front tyres refused to come out during landing, forcing the pilot to land without them. Fortunately no one was injured. The Managing Director of IRS, Yemi Dada, later explained what happened to reporters. He said: "The pilots received a low hydraulic warning minutes before landing, and this affected the landing gear, nose wheel steering, brakes, cargo doors, thrust reverser and the flight controls." “On final approach to Kaduna today on our flight 3390 with 89 passengers, our cockpit crew got a low hydraulic in system 1 warning and decided to take precautionary measures to ask for ground confirmation that all gears were down and locked." “The crew proceeded to land but followed procedure to disembark on the runway and not taxi in accordance with the procedure.” He said all passengers disembarked with the assistance of a crane before the aircraft was towed to ramp. He also said the airline's maintenance crew is checking the aircraft to see what happened.