Plane Collision in JKIA

A Kenya Airways pilot took swift action to prevent a potential catastrophe involving two planes at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

Journalist Moina Spooner from The Conversation described how the Kenya Airways plane was landing and another plane bound for Rwanda was taking off from the airport less than a kilometer away.

Spooner, who wrote about her terrifying experience while on the plane, said that as the plane was getting close to landing, it suddenly lifted off at an angle, leaving the passengers terrified and confused.

“I wasn’t sure if I should write this, but something serious happened at JKIA earlier today.

She wrote on X (then Twitter) about how, “our plane was landing and close to touchdown (we could see the runway and buildings alongside it),” before taking off at an extreme angle.

The landing was aborted, the pilot said, since another plane was already on the runway starting to take off at the same time as the KQ plane.

She placed the blame for the near-catastrophic situation on the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA), but she did give credit to the KQ pilot for his quick thinking and decisive actions, which kept all 234 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner safe.

Spooner also demanded that investigations be conducted into the matter to find out what went wrong and stop it from happening again.

The pilot advised us that he had to level out once the plane was high enough because there was another plane on the runway. Something certainly went wrong at Kenya Airports, which could have had catastrophic consequences.

Air Kenya” I appreciate your pilot’s cool demeanor and quick thinking, which kept us both safe. I really hope this gets looked into and fixed. We can’t sit around waiting for something terrible to happen before doing anything, she pleaded.

Kenyans were outraged by the occurrence and wanted answers from the airport’s administration. The airport is the largest and busiest in East Africa and sees hundreds of planes a day from both domestic and foreign destinations.

Concerns were raised about the safety of having two planes on the runway at once, and Flight Control was questioned about its part in the mix-up and the measures it took to fix things.

According to FlightRadar24’s logs, “Kenya Airways Flight KQ101 from London initiated a go-around at 5,375 feet approximately 3800 feet before the runway threshold at 5:15 this morning.” The beginning of the adjacent cargo apron can be found here. Expert pilot Ian Cox tweeted that the airport’s elevation was 5,330 feet.

A go-around occurs when the flight crew decides to abort an approach or landing and instead performs another approach or diverts to a different airport. Any time before the wheels touch down on the runway (but after the final approach fix and before any deceleration device is activated, including the brakes, spoilers, or thrust reversers) is a legal time for a go-around.

It was also revealed that the flight to Rwanda had left 20 minutes early, which begs the question of who gave permission for it to leave when another plane was on its way to land.

At the time of publication, neither JKIA nor the KAA had issued a statement on the matter, which once again brought up the problem of JKIA’s single runway despite its frequent use.

A Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 cargo plane was unable to take off on Monday, April 17, due to damaged tires, closing the airport’s single runway and forcing the rerouting of multiple flights.