Turkish Airlines said passengers and crew safely exited an Airbus A330 at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport on Monday after smoke appeared coming from the landing gear following the aircraft’s landing.
An airport official at Tribhuvan International Airport had earlier said the plane’s right landing gear caught fire and that emergency crews were able to bring it under control, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to reporters.
The airline later described a different cause. In statements, Turkish Airlines said there had not been a fire and that its preliminary assessment pointed to a malfunction in hydraulic equipment producing the smoke seen near the landing gear.
Turkish Airlines said it evacuated passengers using evacuation slides as a precaution. The airline also said the evacuation process was completed successfully and that no injuries were reported.
The airport shut down in the morning but reopened nearly two hours later after the plane was removed to a safer area at the airport, and flights were operating on schedule later Monday, according to the accounts provided by the airport and the airline.
There were 277 passengers and 11 crew members aboard the Airbus A330 from Istanbul, the airline said. In an airline statement, company official Yahya Üstün said an additional flight had been planned for the return while the airline initiated technical inspections of the aircraft.
Üstün added that initial assessments indicated the smoke was caused by a technical malfunction in a hydraulic pipe.
Nepal has experienced relatively frequent air accidents, with officials and analysts often attributing difficult flying conditions to the country’s mountainous terrain and variable weather. In 2015, a Turkish Airlines jet in dense fog skidded off a runway during landing in Kathmandu, shutting down the airport for several days; no injuries were reported, and the aircraft was later towed out and converted into a museum.