A Boeing 747 plane with over 550 passengers on board made a hard landing on Saturday in Minna, capital of Nigeria’s west-central state of Niger after experiencing a fault in landing, an airport source said.
The plane carrying pilgrims back home from an annual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia experienced a technical fault while landing and had to make a forced landing, in which no one was killed, the source who declined to be named told Xinhua on phone.
The plane is operated by Nigeria-based airline the Max Air, which has not confirmed the accident.
Hajiya Hassana Isah, spokesperson for the state Pilgrims Welfare Board, told reporters that the accident would not affect the return journey of the over 2,000 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia.
An airport security source told Xinhua that the tarmac and other facilities at the airport were damaged as a result of the hard landing.
Officials from the Accident Investigation Bureau in Lagos have inspected the partly damaged aircraft, after which they went into a closed-door meeting, according to the official News Agency of Nigeria.
