Gambia's football team makes emergency landing after plane loses oxygen flying to tournament
A plane carrying Gambia's na‐ tional soccer team made an emergency landing after a sud‐ den loss of oxygen during their flight to compete in the Africa Cup of Nations tournament.
A chartered flight Wednesday carrying the "Scorpions" re‐ turned to Gambia's capital Ban‐ jul after being airborne for nine minutes when the crew realized there were technical problems, Gambia's Football Federation said in a statement on Face‐ book.
"Upon landing, preliminary in‐ vestigations indicated that there was loss of cabin pressure and oxygen," the federation said.
The operating company for the flight, Air Cote d'Ivoire, is further assessing the situation to establish what caused the lack of oxygen and cabin pres‐ sure, it said.
The players were on their way to compete in the Africa Cup in Ivory Coast, which begins Sat‐ urday. This is the 34th edition of the biennial tournament, which was supposed to be played in June and July last year but was postponed to avoid Ivory Coast's tropical rainy season.
Gambia's Belgian coach, Tom Saintfiet, who was on the plane told local Belgian network VRT that the team narrowly escaped death.
"We were all getting carbon monoxide poisoning. Some play‐ ers also did not wake up imme‐ diately after landing," he said.
In a post on Instagram, Gambia player Saidy Janko said the lack of oxygen left people with strong headaches and extreme dizzi‐ ness, with people falling asleep minutes after takeoff.
The team is expected to take another flight to Ivory Coast on Thursday afternoon and travel to the city of Yamoussoukro where some of the games are taking place, the federation said.