A failure in the hydraulic system caused smoke to billow from the landing gear of a Turkish Airlines aircraft that landed at a Nepalese airport on Monday, forcing the evacuation of passengers, the airline stated. An official at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu previously said that the aircraft’s right landing gear had caught fire and that the emergency team managed to control the situation.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly to journalists. However, the airline stated in a press release that there was no fire and that a preliminary assessment indicated the smoke coming from the landing gear was caused by a failure in the hydraulic equipment.
Onboard the Airbus A330, arriving from Istanbul, were 277 passengers and 11 crew members, all of whom were safely evacuated via slides as a precautionary measure, the airline reported. The airport was closed on Monday morning but reopened nearly two hours later after the aircraft was moved to a safer area within the airport. Flights returned to normal operations later that same Monday.
“The evacuation process was completed successfully and there were no injuries,” said Yahya Ustun, an airline official, in a statement.
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“An additional flight was planned for the return journey while our teams began technical inspections of the aircraft,” he continued. Nepal records aviation accidents with relative frequency, as the country’s mountainous terrain and variable climate make flight conditions difficult.
In 2015, a Turkish Airlines jet landing during dense fog in Kathmandu skidded off the slippery runway, forcing the airport to close for several days. There were no injuries, and the plane was later towed away from the airport infrastructure and transformed into a museum.
