A Jet Blue aircraft with 149 passengers made an emergency landing at the Norman Manley International Airport on last night, local aviation officials have confirmed.
Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Lieutenant Colonel Oscar Darby, said that a CAA investigation had started into the circumstances that led the A320 Airbus en route to Colombia from Florida to make the emergency landing at around 8.10 pm (local time).
“Precautionary landing usually take place when one is getting an indication in the cockpit that indicates that there is a problem, it does not necessarily confirm that there is a problem but with that problem you don’t want to travel the entire distance to your destination so you land at the nearest available alternate and make a landing to check the problem. We don’t know what the problem is,” he said.
He said that arrangements were being made to fly the passengers to Colombia.
“Depending on the nature of the problem, whether it is going to take a short fix or whether it is going to be an extended stay here then naturally the passengers would embark on another flight to try to make it on other flights to their destination. Not having any flights out of Kingston to Bogota it might mean another aircraft coming in or whatever the case might be,” Darby said.
Last week, an American Airlines plane with nearly 200 passengers, was forced to make an emergency landing at the Sangster International airport, near the tourist resort town of Montego Bay. (CMC)
