‘Aircraft doors cannot fall off without conscious efforts to open it’ – Dana Airline reacts

This morning, a Twitter user narrated the story of how a Dana plane’s exit door came off as the plane touched down.

According to the twitter user who shared the story, he said, ‘flew Dana. Exit door was unstable throughout the flight. As we touched down it fell off’.

Reacting to the allegation, Dana Airline issued a statement saying, ‘Aircraft doors cannot fall off without conscious efforts to open it’.


See the full statement below…

Dana Air’s attention has been drawn to some online publication that the door of one of our aircraft fell off after landing and whilst taxing in Abuja today.  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.  We also wish to enlighten the author that, when an aircraft is airborne, it is fully pressurized and there was no way the seat or door could have been ‘shaking’ as insinuated.

A thorough inspection was however carried out on the said aircraft upon landing in Abuja, by our engineers and a team from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), and no issue was reported.  There was also no threat to safety at any point.  The flight was only delayed for 8 minutes as we needed to demonstrate to the regulators that the safety and comfort of our guests is at the centre of our operations.  We wish to apologize to our guests for any inconvenience such report may have caused and for the slight delay on the return service to Lagos.  A thorough investigation of the concerned passenger is ongoing.  As one of the oldest and most experienced airline in Nigeria, we remain committed to global best practices.