Smoke and emergency evacuation as a Turkish Airlines plane lands. Passengers, saved on slides
A Turkish Airlines plane with 277 passengers on board was evacuated Monday morning at Nepal's main airport, according to The Washington Post.
The aircraft, an Airbus A330 operating flight TK 726 en route Istanbul to Kathmandu, landed at Tribhuvan International Airport with flames and thick smoke on the right landing gear.
The incident triggered a massive mobilization of the intervention teams, who managed to extinguish the fire before it spread to the fuselage.
All 277 passengers and 11 crew members left the plane on the escape chute, with no casualties reported.
Images captured at the scene show the moment when passengers go down the escape chutes.
The incident paralyzed activity on the airport's only runway. Zecs of international flights were redirected to other destinations in the region.
Aviation authorities in Nepal have opened an investigation to determine the exact cause of the failure, with the first hypotheses indicating an overheating of the braking system or the explosion of a tire on contact with the runway.
Nepal frequently faces challenges in the aviation sector due to its difficult mountainous terrain and limited infrastructure. In 2015, a similar event also involved a Turkish Airlines aircraft skidding on the wet runway in dense fog. Even then, no casualties were reported.
