While they are busy busting drugs at OR Tambo International Airport, Cape Town International Airport is having its own drama. On Wednesday, a Nationwide airplane lost an engine during take off, forcing it to turn back and land again. This follows the drama with the SAA airplane veering of the run way last week Friday. Two incidents in the space of a couple of days: Is there something wrong with Cape Town International?

The drama on Wednesday caught a lot of people by surprise as we have hardly had any major airplane incidents in South Africa in a while. An eye witness said they were sitting at a restaurant at Cape Town International and they actually saw the engine dropping from the sky and landing onto the side of the tarmac.

One can only imagine what was going through the minds of all the passengers on board as they must have been worried. Most of us watch a programme on the National Geographic channel called ‘Air Crash Investigations’ and what happened at the Cape Town airport is what you would expect to see on that show and you would never think it could actually happen to you. Credit must be given to the crew onboard the Nationwide airline for keeping everyone onboard calm and for the pilots to safely land the plane again. I was reading somewhere that a plane can actually safely land with only one engine, I had thought all along that it would be a disaster if a plane looses a single engine.

Yesterday, reports said that the reason the engine had fallen off the Nationwide airplane was that “an object” was sucked into the engine whilst the plane was taking off. They are still trying to figure out what this “object” could have been that caused the engine to fail. I also gather that the structure of the engines is designed such that they can easily detach off the airplanes wing if something goes wrong with the engine thus limiting the impact of engine failure to also cause structural damage to the wing the engine is attached.

As mentioned earlier, we have not had any major accidents with airplanes in South Africa in a while and I hope it remains this way. I am sure all airlines are taking great care of the airplanes as they transport a lot of people on a daily basis. We have now gotten used to not worrying about any incidents in airplanes when we board onto an airplane in South Africa but the two incidents in the last couple of days at Cape Town International have gotten some people now thinking twice when they board an airplane. I would like to know how often our local airlines have safety checks and I feel that the results of such checks should be made public so we know where each airline stands, after all, we are the customer and thus should know how the provider we are choosing is fairing in their safety audits.

We have drug busts at OR Tambo International and airplane incidents at Cape Town International, what is going to happen at the Durban Airport?