KARACHI, Dec 25: A houbara hunting party from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had a close call when the wheels of its special aircraft did not open and the plane had to crash-land at Karachi, forcing airport closure for more than five hours on Sunday.
While foam was not used to minimise the impact of the crash landing which could have caused a fire, all the 74 people and their falcons on board fortunately remained safe with a slight damage to the plane, sources said.The Civil Aviation Authority spokesperson later confirmed to Dawn that foam had not been sprayed over the runway.
The 'planned crash landing' resulted in the closure of the airport and a number of flights arriving at Karachi were diverted to Lahore and other airports.
Thousands of passengers remained stranded for hours at the Jinnah terminal as many flights were delayed.
The sources said that the aircraft from the Egypt's AMC Airlines having a registration number SU-BOZ was chartered by a Saudi Arabian hunting party which was arriving here along with a large number of falcons to hunt the internationally-protected houbara bustard in Balochistan.
The American-manufactured McDonnell Douglas MD 82 aircraft flew from Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. When the plane was about to land at Quetta airport, the crew found out that its landing gear was not opening. The aircraft's spray deflection assembly was broken and stuck with nose landing gear that could not be moved down and landing position, the sources said.
Finally, they said, the crew decided to divert the aircraft to Karachi where better rescue facilities were available in case of a crash landing.
After reaching Karachi, the aircraft, with unopened nose landing gear, made two low approaches at the airport probably to burn the additional fuel and finally performed a nose gear up landing on Jinnah International Airport's runway 25L and brought the aircraft at a standstill on the runway shoulder at about 10.00L (05:00Z).
The sources said the radar data showed that one of the low approaches was continued to a main gear touchdown probably in a hope to shake the nose gear free but without success. The medium-sized narrow body aircraft remained disabled on the runway in a slightly right-tilted position, following the planned crash landing. Dawn
Responding to queries, CAA spokesperson Pervez George said preparations had been made prior to the planned crash landing. As soon as the aircraft stopped, fire tenders and ambulances rushed to the spot, he said. The people on board along with their falcons were quickly evacuated and shifted to the terminal, he added. “All of them remained safe.”
PIA Engineering and Maintenance Director Maqsood Ahmed led the team that rescued and relocated the faulty aircraft, with the help of blasts and trolley, from the runway to a parking bay around one kilometre away. Besides the nose landing gear, some skin of the fuselage had been affected. Without the wheels, that part had been scratched with the runway for around 600 to 700 metres.A number of passengers, who had to travel to Multan, Lahore and Dubai, waited for hours till the Karachi airport opened in the afternoon.
Thousands of passengers coming from Islamabad, Lahore, Faisalabad and Quetta to Karachi also remained stranded at different airports of the country for over five hours.
At least two Karachi-bound flights — one from Multan and the other from Islamabad — were diverted to Nawabshah owing to the airport closure, said PIA spokesperson Tahir Khalique.
