Silverstone: Our plane’s tyre did not catch fire shortly after leaving Wilson

Silverstone has refuted allegations circulating on Twitter that one of its planes was forced to make an emergency landing at Wilson Airport on Tuesday after one of its tyres caught fire while taking off from the airstrip.

The alleged fake tweet was posted by a user Lee Elly, whose Twitter handle is @ItsLeeElly, at 9am Tuesday.

“Silverstone Aircraft Dash 8 5Y-IZK has been forced to make an emergency landing back to Wilson. One of the tyres was on fire,” said Elly in the Twitter post.

Following Elly’s tweet, several online users took to the micro-blogging site to call out Silverstone over alleged negligence and improper maintenance of their aircrafts.

The airline has, however, come out to defend itself against the crash-landing allegations.

“We confirm that none of our aircrafts has had such an incident as per the fake news circulating on social media, such as this. Safety is our top priority and will not be compromised, our services proceed normally as scheduled,” said Silverstone on its official page.

The airline has, in the recent past, faced reputation-damaging incidents, where two of its aircrafts developed mechanical problems after take-off.

On October 11, a Silverstone plane headed to Lamu from Wilson Airport, veered off the runway and crash-landed in the Nairobi National Park, resulting in injuries of six passengers.

Nearly three weeks later, another plane belonging to the same airline was forced to make an emergency landing at the Eldoret International Airport after losing its rear tyre. The plane was traveling to Nairobi from Lodwar.

Following the two Silverstone incidents, and others involving other airlines operating in Kenya, a parliamentary committee, on October 29, summoned the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) and Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) to appear on November 1 to shed light on the level of regulatory compliance of local airlines.

Nearly all the agencies summoned did not appear before the National Assembly Departmental Committee on Transport.