Turkish Airlines jet safely evacuated after landing gear smoke at Nepal airport

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Passengers and crew members were safely evacuated from a Turkish Airlines jet that landed at a Nepal airport Monday with smoke coming out of the landing gear, the airline said.

An official at the Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport had said earlier that the plane’s right landing gear had caught fire and that emergency crew were able to bring it under control. The airport official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to reporters.

However, the airline said in statements that there had not been a fire, and that a preliminary assessment indicated that the smoke coming from the landing gear was cased by a malfunction of hydraulic equipment. Passengers were evacuated via slides as a precaution, the airline said.

The airport was shut down on Monday morning but reopened nearly two hours later, after the plane was removed to a safer area at the airport. Flights were operating on schedule later on Monday.

There were 277 passengers and 11 crew members on board the Airbus A330 from Istanbul.

“The evacuation process was completed successfully and no injuries were reported,” an airline statement quoted company official Yahya Üstün as saying. “An additional flight has been planned for the return, while technical inspections of the aircraft have been initiated by our teams.”

He said that initial assessments indicated that the smoke was caused by a technical malfunction in a hydraulic pipe.

Nepal experiences relatively frequent plane crashes as its mountainous terrain and variable weather make flying conditions difficult.

In 2015, a Turkish Airlines jet landing in dense fog in Kathmandu skidded off a slippery runway shutting down the airport for several days. No injuries were reported, and the plane was later towed out of the airport and converted into a museum.