"Jakarta G. 15th July 2010.
A Batavia Air flight from Pekanbaru, Riau, to Jakarta had to turn back and make an emergency landing midway through the journey on Thursday evening when two explosions were heard coming from the left wing.
Passengers on board reportedly panicked but the plane was not turned back immediately.
“During take off the engine sounded really rough, and five minutes later there was quite a loud bang,” said Amir Husein, one of the passengers.
“Everyone was screaming. Passengers panicked 15 minutes later upon hearing another bang near the left wing of the plane, which began to spark.”
Amir added that the pilot did not explain what the explosions were, only that there were technical problems and as a result, the flight crew would conduct an emergency landing.
“The pilot said that in order to make the emergency landing at Pekanbaru, we had to burn off fuel by circling from 6.45 p.m. to 8.45 p.m.,” he said.
Passengers got even more agitated when the air conditioning had to be turned off.
“But as soon as we landed, everyone clapped their hands,” Amir added.
No immediate report was available for the cause of the explosions or the decision to turn back, while the authorities declined to say if the two incidents were linked. There were 186 passengers and crew on board the airplane.
Batavia rescheduled the flight for the next day, but just before takeoff on Friday morning, a female passenger became hysterical and had to be taken off the plane.
According to an airline official, Zulkifli, the passenger, Andranita, was screaming and pulling a flight attendant’s shirt when the plane was about to take off.
The pilot finally decided to have her removed from the plane to prevent disruptions to the flight. Andranita was helped off the plane by another passenger.
However, Andranita denied that she had been a nuisance. She claimed she only asked a flight attendant to ask the plane’s technician if the plane was ready to fly because she did not want to go through a repetition of Thursday evening’s incident.
“I was traumatized and I asked the flight attendant to confirm that all was well with the plane to reassure us, but she didn’t give me a satisfactory answer,” Andranita said.
According to Ahmadi, who helped Andranita off the plane, she didn’t do anything that may have disrupted the flight.
“It’s highly regrettable that Batavia Air didn’t understand the psychology of passengers who almost experienced an accident. We are all traumatized,” Ahmadi said."
I only guess the only way to fly to EU by an Indonesian to carrier is to buy Airbus, a bit of you scratch my back and I scratch yours... there is no way Batavia can be clear to fly to EU without the Airbus they have.
So be careful out there my cowboys and cowgals..
