Sunday 18 May 2008

Plane crash on Pohnpei

On Friday afternoon I was at home, and the roar of the tuna plane engines as it was landing was louder than usual, but I thought nothing of it....


...until that evening the word was spreading that it had crashed off the end of the runway upon landing!

No-one was hurt, but it is usually carrying a lot of very valuable tuna (some of the best sashimi tuna sell for $20,000 a fish). I haven't seen any of it in the local market yet, hopefully they will be selling it off cheap rather than letting it get all smelly in the plane. We went and had a look, and there it is, a plane in the lagoon. Looks just like a big toy someone has left lying around.



There is only one runway here, and all the flights have been canceled until they investigate the crash and move the plane. How on earth they are going to do that is yet to be seen. There is no plane-moving equipment just lying around the island. The last time there was a crash it was ON the runway, and they could just drag it away, to the rubbish tip next to the runway, where it greets all arrivals to Pohnpei. Nice.

There was word that the passenger jet would be landing on Monday regardless. Not sure I would want to be on that flight...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've had to look at these photos a few times to understand what happened - to me it just looked like an action shot of a plan flying low across the water!
Very glad to hear that no-one was hurt. It'll be interesting to see how they manage from here! I hope things get fixed soon.

Ben and Jo said...

Hee hee - you're right! I guess we are used to short runways that end abruptly with a rock wall on three sides..... It is well and truly wedged on the rock wall. The yellow around the nose of the plane is floating oil containment stuff. Half the plane is lying on the water!

Word is they will move it today.... mind you, they said that yesterday. And the day before.

KapingaGurL said...

Ben and Jo,i'm very apreciated of your work and thank you for the great pics and also glad that everyone in there are fine,wow especially the tuna's,its sounds like everyone in on da island will be eating sasumi every day sounds like/....lol...i knoe i would ...lol..anyways keep up da good work yu guys...nice pics yu got going on there,i'll come again for the latest update on da plane crash and the tuna's/......