Starbow plane crashes at Kotoka International Airport

A Starbow Airline aircraft on a flight from Accra to Kumasi overshot the runaway at Kotoka International Airport as it attempted takeoff on Saturday.

The plane, with 63 passengers and five crew members, ended up in the fencing around the airport, leaving dozens of passengers traumatised.

Deputy Energy Minister, William Owuraku Aidoo, was one of the passengers aboard. He suggested that bad weather could have contributed to the failure of the pilot to get the aircraft off the ground. He confirmed that most of the passengers were traumatised.

"It went off the tarmac and ended somewhere quite far," one of the traumatised passengers told GhanaWeb. "I thought I was going to die."

Shortly after the incident, a fire service truck went to the scene and was the first to help passengers off the aircraft.

Apart from the trauma, most passengers escaped unhurt.

But sources say five of them were rushed to the hospital for treatment.



There's no indication as yet as to the extent of the injuries suffered by those taken to hospital.



Some of the passengers complained that they had been left to their fate after they were helped off the disabled aircraft.

Member of Parliament for Asawase, Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak, who was waiting at the airport for a different flight called on the aviation regulators to do more to sanitise the domestic air travel industry.



Meanwhile, the Emergency Operation Centre of KIA in a statement said emergency procedures have since been activated at the Airport and investigations to establish the cause of the incident have begun.

This is the third incident involving a Starbow flight in a little over three years.

In 2015 passengers on board a Tamale-bound aircraft of Starbow airlines had the scare of their lives when the aircraft, BAE with registration 9GSBB, crash landed in Tamale although no injuries were recorded.

In 2014, two people were injured after a Takoradi bound Starbow aircraft made an emergency landing.