Brussels Airlines flight aborts landing at Monrovia due to dark runway and diverts to Freetown

On Wednesday, 27 April, Brussels Airlines re-routed flight SN241 to Freetown (FNA), Sierra Leone, after the Airbus A330-300 registered OO-SFC suddenly aborted landing at Monrovia’s Roberts International Airport (ROB), Liberia, due to a power outage at the airport and on the runway.

Flight SN241 operates a triangular route between Brussels, Freetown and Monrovia before returning to Brussels. The flight was half an hour late, both on arrival at and departure from Freetown. But when it was about to land in Monrovia, Liberia, all the lights of Monrovia went off, causing the captain to take the decision to abort the landing and to return to Freetown.

The situation did not only cause some unrest among passengers on board but also delayed passengers who were waiting at the airport to board the flight.

The flight was limited on jet fuel but sources at the airport say landing in the dark could be catastrophic to the flight, its passengers and the airport.

In a video recorded on the plane, the purser is heard announcing, “I would like to inform you that the airport in Monrovia is closed and there is no electricity at the moment. They’re trying to fix it, but we have some fuel to do a few miles; but until now, we don’t have any contact at the airport of Monrovia so we have decided to go back to Freetown. In Freetown, we will see if we can take some fuel and what the decision would be next…“

The flight later returned to Monrovia after the airport was powered. This caused a delay for outbound passengers scheduled to take off from ROB at 20:40.  The plane left after 23:50 with a delay of more than three hours. Some passengers were frustrated and concerned about missing connecting flights.

During the 30-minute power outage, just as Brussels Airlines decided to return to Freetown, another inbound aircraft, Air France, entered the airspace just as lights were restored on the runway.

This is the second time in three months a descending plane has been forced to abort landing due to a dark runway at the RIA. In February, Royal Air Maroc was forced to also divert to Freetown due to the same reason.

Source: allAfrica, Liberian Observer, Flightradar24