TAP Air Portugal A320neo Hits Motorcycle, Kills Two

This is a sort of "only in Africa" incident. My thoughts are with the cockpit crew of this flight – absolutely nothing they could have done differently in the pitch black African night, yet they are probably feeling terrible after two people have lost their lives.

Conakry is one of the saddest capitals in the world, and in Africa. I find it easy to belive that basically anyone would have easy access to the runway, and it is probably one of the few places in this country where you can drive really fast on your motorbike...

Conakry airport has historically not had a perimeter fence (until the last 20 years or so) and the runway has traditionally been used as a shortcut from downtown to the areas on the southeast of the airport. Even after the fence was built, it has been fairly common to pay one of the security guards to give you a ride across to the other side. That seems to have been what happened here.

There was an identical situation in Lubumbashi last year where a Congo Airways Dash-8 struck another motorcycle trying to cut across the runway while they were landing.

There are other airports in the region with similar conditions and situations, so hopefully these two accidents have been a bit of a wake-up call.

It is precisely because the motorcyle was involved in some sort of security function at the airport that the motorcycle probably did not "break into" the airport.
Whether he was doing a security sweep or was going to or finished his shift and was cutting through the airport to get home is unknown.
Nearly all western airports require that ground vehicles that use taxiways or runways have flashing lights and also be in contact w/ air traffic control.
Tragic indeed.

Fully agree with you, Sean! But I guess it will not be a "wake-up call." It's just called Africa.

For airports, perhaps "only in Africa".
For level crossings, Poland is bad enough.
I give a trigger warning for this link, but it's published by the state-owned railway company to discourage other drivers from being so utterly stupid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozjZggE_Nyc

@Nelson - That's a rather defeatist attitude to take. I've been involved with African aviation for the past two decades and the biggest change I have seen has been in the safety culture. Africa has gone from being an outright unsafe place to fly in back in the early 2000s to somewhere with a better than global average safety record today. It does not change overnight though. It is a process and it needs commitment from the top to drive it. I promise you nobody is ever gonna try to race an Airbus across the runway in Conakry again as a result of this accident though. Sometimes learning comes the hard way.

@Sean M. : Sometimes learning comes the hard way.
2nd Amendment : Hold my beer.

Roe v. Wade has left the conversation.

This happens almost daily in South Florida with the Brightline. A crossing takes 30 seconds max, yet drivers try and avoid the gates and cross when they shouldn’t.

Zero sympathy, heck, they should speed the trains up. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

@Sean, I partly agree with you but AFAIK those kind of "situations" only happen on that continent. Please feel free to tell me if nowadays that happens in other continents.

How could an incident like this happen?!

Its Africa...

Let's continue to generalize the behavior of a culturally diverse continent on the basis of singular incidents.

Motorcycles run down by planes: Africa
Adults shooting defenseless children or idiot presidents or maybe obese people or angry morons on airlines (just can't choose one): North America
Genocides and war crimes: Europe
Communism and noodles: Asia
Curry and no understanding of queue: South Asia
Cocaine: South America
...Australasia isn't special enough to make the list... although barbecues and roos?
Killer penguins: Antarctica