How Vigilant Engineer Saved Ibom Air Plane from Disaster – Joe Abah

Femi Ashekun/

An internet personality and former Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Dr Joe Abah, has narrated how a vigilant ground engineer saved travellers on an Ibom Airlines flight from a “potential disaster”.

Narrating the experience on his X handle today, Abah said he boarded a 7am flight from Lagos to Abuja this morning and the flight was ready to take off when the unusual happened.

He explained that he was on the flight heading to Abuja with the co-founder and Director of BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, when they heard a loud knock on the aircraft door.

He wrote, “I boarded a 7am @ibomairlines flight in Lagos this morning, heading to Abuja. My brother @seunonigbinde was on the same flight and we had chatted briefly about work. Aircraft door was shut, phones switched off, ready for takeoff.

“As we were about to start taxiing, there was a loud knock on the aircraft door from outside. We all wondered what it could be. The knocking  got more persistent. The flight attendant had to open the door again.

“As she did, a ground engineer came in and those of us in front clearly heard him say ‘You can’t go. Your landing gear is bad’.

“The pilot made a ‘political’ announcement that they need to perform some additional checks before take off and apologised for the delay. He spoke with the engineer and, a few seconds later, announced that we were to disembark.

“I thank God that we have the systems in place to check this and avert potential disaster. And that we have some diligent Nigerians who take their work seriously.

“If you are that young Nigerian engineer, God will bless you abundantly.

“Dear @NigeriaCAA, please find that young engineer for me. I want to thank him personally. Cc. @fkeyamo.”

Ibom Air has also issued a statement confirming the incident.

The statement by airline reads, “This morning, on our 7 am flight from Lagos to Abuja, while the aircraft was pushing back from the gate, under the supervision of the monitoring engineer, he noticed an issue with the nose gear. The engineer, who wore a headset to communicate with the pilots, promptly drew the attention of the pilot in command to his observation.

“The decision was made to inspect the nose, and passengers had to be disembarked. This is a routine practice in the industry. The supervising engineers remain vigilant in inspecting an aircraft until it departs. 

“While the aircraft has since been taken to the hangar to have the problem fixed, we regret the delay in delivering our usual service to our valued passengers. We will always take precautions & prioritize the safety of our passengers.”

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