Posted by on
Air France has resumed flights from the southern Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, the airline said Friday, two days after an airliner arriving from Paris ploughed into a herd of cows on the runway.
Lagos - Air France has resumed flights from the southern Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, the airline said Friday, two days after an airliner arriving from Paris ploughed into a herd of cows on the runway.
None of the 196 passengers on board the Airbus A330 jet was injured in Wednesday's accident, which left at least six cattle dead on the tarmac, but the incident has increased concerns about Nigeria's aviation safety record.
Air France spokesperson Moyo Adeola said that the A330 was still grounded at Port Harcourt while being checked over for damage but that a Boeing 777 had been diverted to cover the firm's four flights a week to and from Paris.
Nigerian press reports said that Aviation Minister Issa Yuguda has ordered an investigation into who was responsible for allowing the herd to stray and said that any other cows spotted near the runway would be shot on sight.
Nigeria's aviation industry has a patchy safety record and minor accidents and damage to planes is a regular occurrence. Last week a domestic jet airliner crash-landed on the tarmac at Lagos after its landing gear failed to deploy.
The last serious accident was in May 2002, when pilots lost control of a flight out of the northern city of Kano and scythed into an inner city district, killing around 100 passengers and dozens more on the ground.