Helicopter Makes Emergency Landing At Abelemkpe School Pitch

A helicopter owned by a leading helicopter service provider in the country has made an emergency landing at a football field of the Abelemkpe Two Basic Schools in Accra.
Technical experts from the West African Helicopters arrived at the scene at about 1:20PM Wednesday afternoon with the personnel from the Kotobabi Police to examine the cause of the emergency landing.

The all-white helicopter has the registration 9G-AEP. It's not clear where the helicopter was traveling from but the Flight Operations Manager, Ole Aronsen, told the media the helicopter which takes about five people was heading heading for Kotoka International Airpot. Officials are not forthcoming with information on how many people were on board and where it was travelling from.

Mr Aronsen said the helicopter had flown for 30 minutes when the pilot detected a warning signal prompting him to force-land at about 12:00PM as a preventive measure. Our sources say the signal might have been triggered by an engine fault.

Experts who arrived opened the engine compartment to do some repair works after which the engine was started but the plane could not take off, Peter Adattor reports. He said a reinforcement team have arrived to help fix the plane. As at 3:00PM, technicians had tried three times to get the helicopter in the air but to no avail.


One passenger on board had earlier told TV3 he had no idea what caused the emergency landing, noting that the captain did not say. He said the plane landed safely and that no one was hurt but did not say how many people were on board.

The helicopter attracted curious pupils from their classrooms to the field where efforts were underway to get it flown out. Before the Police and the technical team arrived, about 12 private security officers from Intercon-Security surrounded the area to prevent people from getting close.

Meanwhile, information gathered from the ground suggested that the private security which was called in few minutes after the incident formed a human barricade around the helicopter as some unspecified goods were offloaded and carted away in Intercon Security vehicles.