Last week I posted a video of a Daallo Airlines flight between Mogadishu to Djibouti, which experienced an explosion shortly after takeoff. The explosion caused a roughly one meter hole in the side of the plane, and one person was even sucked out of the plane, as his remains were found in a nearby village.
There are two interesting updates to the story, one of which we’ll chalk up to karma, and the other of which we’ll chalk up to very good luck (or bad luck, depending on the airline).
First of all, the one guy who was blown out of the plane happened to be the guy with the explosive, according to reports. Via Airwise:
The bomber was sucked out of the plane through the 1 metre wide hole when the blast ripped open the pressurised cabin in flight, officials said.
US officials said investigators believe the bomb was hidden in a laptop computer, and that the bomber had some type of connection to airline or airport personnel.
CCTV footage released by the Somali National Intelligence Agency (NISA) appears to show two airport workers inside the terminal handing the suicide bomber a laptop, according to the government spokesman.
I guess it’s slightly less sad if the only guy who got killed was the one who was trying to blow up the plane.
But there’s more. The passenger wasn’t even meant to be on a Daallo Airlines flight, but rather had been booked on Turkish, and that flight was canceled:
Daallo Airlines chief executive, Mohamed Yassin, said most of the passengers who were on the bombed flight were scheduled to fly with Turkish Airlines, but were flown to Djibouti by one of his planes after the Turkish carrier cancelled its flight, citing bad weather.
“That particular passenger (who was behind the blast) boarded the aircraft on a Turkish Airlines boarding pass and was on the list for the Turkish Airlines manifest,” Yassin told Reuters news agency.
Yassin said Daallo picked up the 70 stranded Turkish Airlines passengers to fly them to Djibouti, including the suicide bomber. In total, the flight had 74 passengers.
Turkish must be rather happy they canceled that flight! I’m not sure if that’s crazier, or that 70 of the 74 passengers were supposed to be on Turkish, meaning the A321 presumably only otherwise had four passengers on it!
Bottom line
Thank goodness no one died in this incident, other than the guy with the explosive. It’s crazy to think he wasn’t even meant to be booked on that flight… and almost as crazy to think that the flight originally only had four people booked on it!
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