Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando was among dozens of travellers from Harare who were left stranded in Lusaka, Zambia, on Sunday night after a Qatar Airways plane developed a technical fault.
Chitando, who was travelling to Canada, reportedly cancelled the trip and returned home on Monday. He told ZimLive:
I was en route to Toronto, Canada, to address a mining conference on Tuesday.
The aircraft, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, declared an emergency on approach to Kenneth Kaunda International Airport due to a suspected bird strike on one of the engines.
According to data from FlightRadar24, Flight QR1456 departed Harare at 6.44 PM and landed in Lusaka at 7.30 PM
The passengers waited two hours at the airport before they were put on buses to sleep at local hotels.
Qatar Airways informed the passengers they would complete their journeys on the next service on Monday night.
However, this disrupted the plans of many of the passengers who had connecting flights and scheduled meetings at their destinations.
The plane had been due to depart Lusaka at 9.15 PM for Doha, Qatar’s capital before a technical fault was declared.
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The minister must have been devastated about not being able to fly. Another freebee to a Western country gone….This Govt pretends to hate to the Imperialist West, but given any opportunity to visit one of these counties, they grab it with both hands. I can almost guarantee that if this conference were being held in Belarus, he wouldn’t haven even bothered attending.