KATHMANDU, NEPAL \u2014 Dramatic scenes unfolded at Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) early Monday morning as 289 people were forced to evacuate a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 via emergency slides following a fire in the aircraft\u2019s landing gear.<\/p>\n
Incident Details<\/p>\n
Flight TK726, arriving from Istanbul, touched down in the Nepali capital at approximately 6:45 AM local time. Shortly after landing, witnesses and airport officials reported seeing thick grey smoke and visible flames erupting from the Right Main Landing Gear (MLG).<\/p>\n
Preliminary reports suggest the fire was caused by overheated brakes or a technical malfunction in a hydraulic pipe. Airport emergency services responded immediately, deploying fire engines to douse the flames before they could reach the main fuselage.<\/p>\n
Passenger Safety and Evacuation<\/p>\n
Despite the harrowing sight of smoke billowing from the undercarriage, all 277 passengers and 12 crew members (some reports state 11 crew) were safely evacuated.<\/p>\n
Impact on Airport Operations<\/p>\n
As the only international gateway to Nepal, the single-runway airport faced significant disruption:<\/p>\n
Runway Closure: The runway was temporarily closed for approximately one hour while the aircraft was inspected and eventually towed to a secure taxiway.Flight Delays: Several incoming international flights were forced into holding patterns or diverted to nearby airports.Current Status: Operations have since resumed, though a backlog of flights is expected throughout the day.Investigation Underway<\/p>\n
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has launched a formal technical investigation into the cause of the overheat. Turkish Airlines Communications Director Yahya \u00dcst\u00fcn confirmed that the aircraft (registration TC-JNP) is currently grounded for a full safety inspection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KATHMANDU, NEPAL \u2014 Dramatic scenes unfolded at Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) early Monday morning as 289 people were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,8684,8685,2725,8686],"class_list":{"0":"post-10372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-airbus","8":"tag-airbus","9":"tag-ktm","10":"tag-tc-jnp","11":"tag-tk","12":"tag-tk726"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}