All 224 Passengers and Crew Safe
Turkish Airlines flight 726 missed the runway Wednesday morning while attempting to land at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, causing the front landing gear to collapse and the plane to skid several hundred yards across the grass verge.
All 224 passengers and crew evacuated the plane on emergency slides, and officials say that there are no serious injuries. The airport remained closed at noon Wednesday, with no news on when it would reopen.
The weather was the apparent cause. In winter, Kathmandu often has heavy fog cover in the morning, and the flight scheduled to land at 06:15 a.m. was put into a holding pattern for approximately 90 minutes before being given permission to land.
The investigation is likely to focus on why the plane was eventually given landing clearance. Minimum visibility required by Nepal’s civil aviation authorities for landing in Kathmandu is 3,000 meters (about two miles), but photographs and video of the plane taken by passengers after the crash show fog nearly obscuring the aircraft from less than 200 meters away.
Passenger video after the crash:
