RAWALPINDI, July 20: A major air disaster was averted early Sunday morning at the Islamabad international airport as the pilot of Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 747 with 264 people aboard aborted the take-off half-way through the runway on noticing faults in two of the engines.

As captain Tauqueer Ahmed applied the breaks to stop the plane from overshooting the runway, all the 16 rare tyres of the plane burst with a bang and the aircraft hurtled on at about 200 kilometres an hour stopping just inches within the runway perimeter.

Sources close to the investigation team said the pilot became aware of the emergency when he noticed that while the front wheels of the plane had taken off the ground, the body of the plane was refusing to get airborne.

All 264 people — 248 passengers and 16 crew members — aboard the New York flight PK-717 remained unhurt. However, they did suffer shock due to the incident. About 218 passengers were travelling in economy class while the rest were in business class.

The Boeing 747 plane, PIA flight PK-717 was on its way to take-off for New York via Manchester at 3.45am with a delay of 45 minutes from its scheduled departure.

An aviation expert said: “There was nothing wrong with the tyres. They had ruptured due to friction as brakes were applied when the plane was gathering high speed. If the pilot had not stopped the plane, it would have resulted in a major disaster.”

The aircraft carrying President Pervez Musharraf, who was returning from his foreign trip (Casablanca), was expected to land at 8.40am but could not as the airport was closed down after the aborted take-off of PK-717. The president’s flight “Pakistan-1” , therefore, had to be diverted to Lahore.

All international and domestic flights to Islamabad were cancelled as the airport was closed down for 24 hours, but relief flights of Fokker aircraft from Lahore to Islamabad, carrying spare tyres for Boeing 747, were still running. The incoming passengers have been ferried from Lahore and Peshawar by road.

A source at the airport said one scheduled flight PK-701 for Manchester was, however, operated from Islamabad from a shorter runway No. 12 at 10.30am.

All the passengers on board the New York flight were disembarked through stairs. No emergency exit was used during the disembarkation, the authorities said.

Relatives and friends arrived at the airport to meet the passengers on flight PK-717 as the news spread that the New York flight could not take-off because of a technical emergency.

The last radio contact with the aircraft was its clearance for take-off and there was no indication from air traffic control of any problem at that time, the source said, and added that there was no unusual communications between the cockpit and air traffic control.

A team of investigators from the Civil Aviation Authority and PIA was already on the ground probing the incident with another team from Karachi en route.

Till 5pm, six of the 16 tyres brought from Lahore had been replaced, the source said.

Shortly after the disembarkation was over, the crew members, including the captain of PK-717 flight, were subjected to medical test and their statements recorded by the preliminary investigating team. Captain Tauqueer Ahmed is Lahore-based, while first officer Kaleem belongs to Karachi. Mazhar-ul-Islam was the flight engineer for PK-717.

A source close to the investigation team revealed that the Boeing 747 whose take-off was aborted today was a 30-year-old plane and it had faced similar “dramatic failures” on two occasions, in the past.

On these occasions, too, major disasters were averted in the nick of the time.

PROBE UNDER WAY: Meanwhile, PIA Chairman Ahmed Saeed has ordered investigation into the aborted take-off of PK-717 that led to disturbance in flight schedule and shifting of flights to other airports.