A Boeing 767 cargo plane has narrowly avoided a crash landing after its front landing gear failed.
A Boeing 767 cargo plane has narrowly avoided a crash landing after its front landing gear failed.
The plane, belonging to the American postal company Fedex was on a flight from Paris to Istanbul at around 7.55am this morning.
Turkey’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said the pilot ‘notified Istanbul Airport air traffic control (ATC) that the front landing gear could not deploy’.
It landed only at the second attempt and its nose ‘pecked’ into the runway.
Dramatic video footage shows the moment the plane hit the tarmac sending sparks up into the air.
No one was injured and the crew safely evacuated the aircraft, said Abdulkadir Uraloglu, Turkey’s transportation and infrastructure minister.
The runway where the plane landed was closed off while the aircraft was being removed, he said.
The crash comes after a number of different issues with Boeing planes, including one that lost a panel mid-flight.
In March United Airlines Flight 35, a Boeing 777-200, lost part of a landing gear tire during takeoff from San Francisco International Airport to Osaka, Japan.
The debris landed in an employee parking lot. The plane diverted to Los Angeles International Airport and no one was injured.
And just few days later another United Airlines flight, a Boeing 777-300 that departed from Sydney for San Francisco, was forced to turn back to Australia after fuel was observed spilling from its landing gear.
Just last week a second whistleblower who accused Boeing of ignoring safety flaws in the 737 MAX airplanes died.
Joshua Dean, a former Spirit AeroSystems quality auditor, claimed he was fired for flagging concerns about lax standards at the company’s manufacturing plant in Wichita, Kansas.
His sudden death at the age of 45 on Tuesday came after suffering from a fast-spreading infection, according to his family and lawyer.
Dean’s lawyer Brian Knowles said it is a ‘loss to the aviation community and the flying public’.
Following the incident, Istanbul Airport operator IGA said: ‘The accident was taken under control without any loss of life with the immediate intervention of the İGA Istanbul Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting team (ARFF), which was ready on the runway before the controlled landing on the fuselage.’
‘IGA Istanbul Airport Rescue and ARFF continues its efforts to move the aircraft to a safe area and open the runway to flight traffic. Flight traffic and operations continue smoothly on all other runways, including the spare runways.’
This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.
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