Bono's plane loses hatch before landing in Berlin
Bono speaks at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security in Washington on May 18, 2012. Berlin airport authorities said the U2 frontman's private plane lost a hatch as it was coming in for a landing on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2014, in the German capital, but the Irish singer was never in any danger. Credit: AP / J. Scott Applewhite
A rear hatch in a private jet carrying U2 lead singer Bono flew off in midair early Wednesday, though an aviation expert says those aboard were in no danger.
"The Learjet lost a door where the luggage was put in," Germout Freitag, an official with the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation, told ABC News Thursday. The Learjet 60 was flying from Dublin to Berlin, where U2 was scheduled to perform at the Bambi Awards, Germany's version of the Emmys.
Two pilots and four other passengers also were on board, said CNN, which noted that Bono's fellow band members had been traveling separately.
Freitag, reported CNN, said that after the aircraft landed at Berlin's Schönefeld Airport at 12:26 a.m., "The ground crew realized the door was gone and two suitcases had fallen out." The door had blown off 11 minutes earlier, Freitag said.
"Officials have not yet located the two suitcases or the hatch door, but they have been able to pinpoint the area where they are likely to have landed by the radar," he added. "The investigation will take at least six to eight weeks and will be greatly hampered if the door is not located."
Aviation expert John Nance told ABC News that such an incident "is very unusual, but they were never really at risk." He said, "The passengers may have been scared when they heard a noise, but they never lost pressurization."
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