A Boeing 737-300 plane carrying 85 people skidded off a runway at the airport in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, injuring 10 people, according to the transport minister.
Footage from a passenger showed the aircraft on fire and in ruins on the side of the runway.
Viral video from the incident included a video of passengers jumping down the emergency slides at night as flames engulfed one side of the aircraft.
In the background, people can be heard screaming.
Today, terrified passengers scrambled to escape a burning Boeing jet in Senegal. Also a tyre exploded on a Boeing landing in Turkey – 24 hours after nose gear failure caused 767 to slam into runway pic.twitter.com/Hszwit8xMi
— Mark Alan Pearce (@PearceAlan1962) May 9, 2024
Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye said the Air Sénégal flight, operated by TransAir, was headed to Bamako, in neighboring Mali, late Wednesday with 79 passengers, two pilots, and four cabin crew members. The airport reopened on Thursday morning after closing overnight.
The injured individuals were being treated at a hospital, while the others were taken to a hotel to rest. Boeing referred a request for comment to the airlines.
This incident marks the third involving a Boeing airplane this week. Also on Thursday, 190 people were safely evacuated from a plane in Turkey after one of its tires burst during landing at a southern airport, according to Turkey’s transportation ministry.
Boeing has been under intense pressure since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. In February, the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to fix quality problems and meet safety standards for building planes after the accident.
The incident has raised scrutiny of Boeing to the highest level since two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. About a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the second crash have been pushing the U.S. government to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement.
In April, a Boeing whistleblower named Sam Salehpour testified at a congressional hearing, stating that the company had taken manufacturing shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible, which could lead to jetliners breaking apart.
The Aviation Safety Network (ASN), which tracks airline accidents, described the plane involved in the Senegal incident as a Boeing 737-38J. The network published photos of the damaged plane in a grassy field, surrounded by fire suppressant foam, on X (formerly known as Twitter). The photos showed that one engine appeared to have broken apart, and a wing was also damaged.
ASN is part of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group that aims to promote safe air travel and tracks accidents.