Emergency landing for Ghana-bound flight from US as passengers fight

A Boeing 767 United Airlines plane with 144 passengers coming to Ghana from the Dulles International Airport in the United States was forced to do an emergency landing due to a fight which erupted between two passengers over a reclining chair on the flight.

The Washington Post reports that the cause of the fighting was that, a passenger hit the recline button and sent his seat intimately close to the lap of the guy sitting behind him.

The report suggests that the landing of the aircraft was due to the intervention of two Air Force F-16 fighter jets scrambling into the night skies over Washington because the United Airlines plane had re-entered the territory.

“Audio transmissions indicate that the two Air Force fighters scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base, just as the plane reentered Washington airspace”, the Washington Post said.

After the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in the US plotted by the late Osama Bin Laden, pilots have learned to be wary as in recent years, disturbances have shown terrorists attempt to ignite explosives hidden in shoes and underwear.

Air Force fighter jets stand ready to respond to situations such as this one, in which passengers, who might be terrorists, cause trouble in flight, said the publication.

A spokesman at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Rob Yingling, according to the publication, said members of the Dulles police force met the flight at the gate and officers determined that the incident didn’t warrant pressing any charges.

By Ekow Quandzie