(Eagle News) — Philippine airport authorities are now investigating Lionair Philippines and are mulling grounding its entire fleet after the latest incident involving its medical plane at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said that it is investigating the latest accident of Lionair involving a medical evacuation plane that caught fire while taking off at NAIA’s runway on Sunday night, March 29, killing all eight people on board.
The incident happened at about 8 p.m. Sunday, at the end of Runway 24 while the aircraft was taking off, a MIAA advisory issued late Sunday night said.
The plane, a West Wind Aircraft 24, was on a medical evacuation mission bound for Haneda, Japan. It was carrying two passengers and six crew members including three pilots. In the plane was a Canadian national, an American national, three pilots, a doctor and a nurse.
“Immediately after the incident, the MIAA Fire and Rescue team were dispatched to the site to douse the flames with chemical foam,” the MIAA advisory said.
“Unfortunately, no passenger survived the accident.”
MIAA said that the NAIA runway has been temporarily closed, as investigators from CAAP’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Board are investigating and determining the cause of the accident.
This was the second time that a Lionair craft had figured in an accident which prompted airport authorities to ground all planes of Lionair. The last incident happened in September 2019 when a medical evacuation plane carrying nine passengers also crashed in Laguna, killing all people on board.
“Currently it’s being investigated, we cannot confirm or give speculation, but indeed it happened and there were no survivors. It’s too early to speculate,” said Ed Monreal, MIAA general manager as to the September 2019 accident involving Lion Air.
The latest accident also alarmed airport officials.
“Based on the reports of the Manila Tower, they were alarmed that based on such the size of the aircraft, took them some time to takeoff,” said Capt. Donald Mendoza, CAAP Deputy Director-General for Operations.
He noted that the same aircraft had been used to ferry medical supplies to Iloilo on Saturday, and was able to return to Manila safely.
“Kahapon lang po nasa Iloilo siya, naghatid ng medical supplies, and then it went back to Manila safely,” he said during a presscon on Sunday night.
“Right now, the initial step that we’re looking into is grounding the whole fleet. It’s quite alarming,” Mendoza said.
The official promised to “look into the records deeply” because of this unfortunate event that happened to Lion Air.
“Definitely, we’ll have a thorough investigation to this. We will advise the operator of the actions to be taken,” Mendoza added.
Lionair is a charter airline and a general aviation company operating in the Philippines with base operations in Pasay City. It describes itself as “the leading helicopter and executive jets charter service company in the Philippines.”
“Lionair together with our partner, Advance Life Support “Life Line” is committed to providing quality pre-hospital medical care and is equipped to immediately and efficiently provide medical airlift or air ambulance services from anywhere in the Philippines and around the region,” its website said.
“Lionair also provides air ambulance services through the Executive Jets Asia (EJA) and it’s fully owned subsidiary Flying Doctors Asia (FDA),” it added.
(with reports from Meanne Corvera and Earlo Bringas, Eagle News Service)