Turkish Airlines passengers slide to safety after jet catches fire in Kathmandu

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A Turkish Airlines jet caught fire while landing at Nepal’s main airport on Monday, prompting the crew to deploy slides to evacuate all passengers safely, officials said.

The airline said in a statement that smoke was observed from the landing gear while taxiing and passengers were evacuated as a precaution via slides.

Emergency crews at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport extinguished the fire.

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,” the statement quoted airline 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.