Two wheels were missing from a Macau-bound Chinese passenger jet after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Shenzhen airport on
Tuesday, aviation authorities said.
The airport at Shenzhen, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of
Macau, shut one of its runways for three hours to accommodate the
emergency landing.
It was unclear how the plane was able to land safely in Shenzhen at about 11.58 am after aborting a scheduled landing in Macau.
Shanghai to Phuket flightsThe flight, which had taken off from Beijing, was operated by Capital
Airlines, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in a
statement on its website. Capital Airlines is a subsidiary of Hainan
Airlines.
It was the second emergency landing for Capital Airlines in three days
after mechanical problems forced another flight by the budget carrier to
return to Kunming 50 minutes after taking off on Sunday.The airline
said the front landing gear of the A320 involved in Tuesday’s flight was
damaged as it tried to land in Macau in bad weather, prompting the
pilots to divert to Shenzhen.
The airline added it suspected the flight encountered wind shear during
its attempted landing in Macau.The aircraft was carrying 157 passengers
and nine crew. Five people sustained minor injuries in the incident,
Shenzhen Baoan International Airport said.
According to The Beijing News, the aircraft reported a failure with its
left engine and communications system soon after the aborted landing in
Macau.
Footage posted online purported to show people evacuating the plane via
emergency slides at the Shenzhen airport. Part of the front landing gear
appeared to be missing in the footage.
“I have been through life and death … The tyre is missing,” one man says in the video.
The incident caused delays to a number of other flights at the airport, the facility said on its verified Weibo account.
