“That was like an eternity”, the account of some of the passengers of the plane that landed in an emergency in Rionegro

On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 29, there was a frightening emergency with a plane in Rionegro, Antioquia. The aircraft landed in an emergency at José María Córdova airport after presenting a problem with one of the wheels. The emergency occurred when the CC-BAS registered aircraft operating flight LA4292 on the Medellin - Cartagena route presented a problem with one of the nose train wheels during takeoff.

Faced with this situation, the commander and crew decided to fly over the airport area to consume fuel and declared themselves in an emergency, so they were given priority for landing, which was finally given at 15:12 local time, as confirmed by Latam Airlines Colombia in a statement.

According to the crew members, the moments were very distressing, some spoke to Colombian media and told him that the 20 minutes were very annoying, moreover, that it all started before they got on the plane with many complications.

“They told us that the flight was going to be canceled, at that moment another girl arrives, three minutes later and tells us that it is time to board. All of us who were there are embarked and when we had been in the air for 17 minutes we get a warning that the plane is having a mechanical failure. I have a one and a half year old baby, that is, there were many children, there were 5 or 6 arm babies, there were seniors... That was impressive,” said Kelly Manuela Cifuentes, one of the passengers on RCN Radio, adding that after the announcement, “They informed us that it was because they needed to run out of the gasoline they had tanked in order to avoid that if we crashed when we landed, there would be an explosion. It was very traumatic.”

Another passenger, Juan Camilo, who spoke with El Colombiano, said that the worst thing was that after the warning “They didn't explain to us what the reasons were. Almost half an hour in the air like that. That was like an eternity”, moreover, that anguish gripped people on the plane and they began to shout: “collision, collision, collision! We are going to collide...” At that moment the tension overcame the crew members who began to cry and then each one in their own way began to say their prayers because until that moment all they thought was that the plane was going to fall and catch fire.

However, as a miracle for many, when they least thought about it, the plane landed “but it took a long time for them to let us down because it was very leaning backwards,” Juan Camilo added to his account.

For his part, Cifuentes highlighted the work of both the pilot and the hostesses, but he drew attention that the flight had been carried out knowing that transport had failures from the start.

“The pilot took everything with the seriousness of the case because the truth literally saved us, had it not been for the maneuvers he carried out, we would not be telling the story. There was also very good attention from the hostesses, but it was a total neglect that they saw a flight with problems and carry them out,” said Kelly Manuela Cifuentes on the radio station.

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