Pilot after Somalia emergency: Airport security is ‘zero’

The Serbian pilot who landed a jetliner in Somalia with a three-foot hole in its fuselage said Sunday that he never doubted it was caused by a bomb and described the security surrounding the airplane at Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu as “zero.” A suicide bomber is suspected to have set off the explosive inside the plane, Somali officials said Saturday. The blast sucked a male passenger out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing Tuesday in Somalia’s capital, they said. The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane, with 74 passengers on board, took off from the airport and was at 11,000 feet ascending toward 30,000 feet. “If we were higher, the whole plane could have disintegrated after the explosion,” said the pilot, Vlatko Vodopivec. Because the plane was at a lower altitude, he was able to land it safely, Vodopivec said. “The plane acted normally, and we virtually returned normally. Engines and hydraulics worked normally.”<br/>