A Boeing 737-300, attempting to take off from Blaise Diagne International Airport in Dakar, Senegal, caught fire and skidded off the runway on Wednesday evening. Of the 85 passengers and crew on the Air Sénégal Flight HC301, 10 were injured, including the pilot, according to the Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye.
All were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital, with four in critical condition.
The flight was operated by TransAir, a regional airline based in Senegal that provides service from Senegal’s capital of Dakar to as far south as Brazzaville, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. HC301 was headed to Bamako, the capital of Mali.
TransAir’s fleet consists of Embraer ERJ-145, Embraer EMB-120, Beechcraft 1900C jetliners, in addition to the Boeing 737-300. The 737-300 “Classic” is one of Boeing’s oldest operating planes. Its development began in 1979 and first began operations in 1984. The aerospace giant made 1,113 of the planes during its production run, which lasted from 1981-1999.
While no further information has been released from the Senegalese government as to the immediate cause of the fire, it is likely that the sheer age of the aircraft played a role. The 737-300, -400 and -500 aircraft have also some of the company’s most accident-prone designs. Boeing’s own data in a report from September 2023 shows that the aircraft series has suffered 62 “hull losses,” where the plane was unrecoverable, of which 20 resulted in fatalities.
The older 737 models stand alongside the 737 MAX as among the most deadly commercial airplanes currently flown. Two crashes of the 737 MAX-8 in October 2018 and March 2019 killed a combined total of 346 passengers and crew, the direct result of Boeing executives pushing for a new aircraft to bring to market while ignoring numerous known safety issues. To date, no executives or senior leadership have been charged for the deaths.
The same day of the fire in Senegal, another Boeing plane, a 767 model, was forced to land without its landing gear in Istanbul, Turkey. The plane was a freight variant operated by FedEx that was coming from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. The pilot reported to air traffic control that the landing gear had not deployed and was instructed to land without them while emergency vehicles stood by.
There were no reported injuries, though the pilot was forced to leave the plane via the cockpit’s window.
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