It seems that tragedy continues to follow commercial airplanes. The recent victim is a Somalian jet that made an emergency landing at the country’s Mogadishu International Airport following an explosion. The explosion tore a hole in the plane’s fuselage a few minutes after it took off. According to country’s aviation officials, only two persons were injured during the incident and no deaths have been cited. However, there are unconfirmed reports about a person falling out of the hole in the plane. There are speculations as to why the explosion took place, however, the aviation experts and the pilot have attributed the explosion to a bomb.
https://twitter.com/somaliaphotos/status/694511578331377669/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
The 74 passengers along with the crew were evacuated safely after the plane landed. The video footage from the cabin shows quite a calm atmosphere following the explosion. Awale Kullane, Somalia’s deputy ambassador to the UN was also aboard the plane and said in a Facebook post (removed later) that he ‘heard a loud noise and couldn’t see anything but smoke for a few seconds.’ According to passengers, when the smoke cleared ‘quite a chunk’ of the plane was missing. The plane in question was Airbus A321.
Aviation experts have stated that it was either a bomb or pressurization blowout that caused this accident. However, the pictures of the craft show soot around the damaged fuselage that wouldn’t have happened if it was a blowout. Also, according to reports, the explosion happened before the plane had achieved the maximum pressurization height of 30,000ft.
The 64 year old pilot, Vladimir Vodopivec said, “I think it was a bomb. Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport. Something like this has never happened in my flight career. We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank god it ended well.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRnPVmt9Rz4