On Jun 27th 2025, an Asky Airlines Boeing 737-800 was forced to turn back to its departure airport only minutes after takeoff when the crew detected a problem with one of the engines, setting off a chain of events that would strand both aircraft and passengers for weeks.
The aircraft, registered ET-AXI and operating flight KP-71 from Kinshasa N’Djili to Lomé, had just climbed away from runway 06 when the crew halted the climb at flight level 120 after indications of a fault in one of the CFM56 engines. With the situation unresolved, the pilots elected to return to Kinshasa as a precaution. About 20 minutes after departure, the aircraft landed safely on runway 24 without further incident.
While the technical issue was handled calmly in the cockpit, the experience on the ground proved far more frustrating for passengers. One traveler reported that after landing back in Kinshasa, those on board were left with little information and had to wait until the next day to continue their journey on a replacement aircraft. Even then, the passengers departed without their checked luggage. They were told it would arrive the following day, but the bags reportedly failed to appear even two days after the disrupted flight.
The aircraft itself remained grounded in Kinshasa for an extended period, only positioning to Lomé on Jul 24th 2025 and returning to active service the following day, almost a month after the initial incident.
More than six months later, the event was formally classified as a serious incident. On Jan 27th 2026, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s accident investigation authority, BPEA, confirmed that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from ET-AXI had been sent to the French BEA laboratory for download and analysis. The investigation remains ongoing as authorities work to determine the exact nature of the engine fault that ended the flight shortly after it began.
