A cargo plane made an emergency landing at Istanbul airport on Wednesday after its front landing gear failed.
A video on social media showed the FedEx Express Boeing 767 using the rear landing gear and then plunging its nose with the front of the fuselage.
The aircraft in question is an almost 10-year-old Boeing 767 freighter, one of the most common cargo aircraft and based on the 767 passenger model that dates back to the 1980s.
The plane was on the last leg of its flight from Paris to Istanbul when the pilots realized that the front landing gear was not opening, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
This was reported by the Turkish Ministry of Transport in a statement in which it announced the opening of an investigation to clarify the incident, apparently caused by a hydraulic failure that prevented the deployment of the secondary (nose) landing gear.
FedEx said in a statement that it was coordinating with investigating authorities and would “provide additional information as it becomes available.”
Video footage obtained from Reuters showed sparks flying and smoke billowing as the front of the plane scraped the runway before being doused with firefighting foam.
No one was injured and the crew evacuated the plane safely.said Abdulkadir Uraloglu, Türkiye’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure.
The runway on which the cargo plane landed has been temporarily closed to air traffic, but traffic on the airport’s other runways continued without interruption, according to airport operator IGA.
“Right now it is very difficult to say when the plane will be removed from the runway. You must first complete the investigation. Next, the airline must decide what to do with its plane. It is out of the question for the airport operator, IGA Istanbul Airport, to forcibly remove the plane from the runway,” commented the airport’s director of air operations, Ozan Karakis.
An aviation media reported that the B767-300F are one of the “workhorses” of FedEx operations after the retirement of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10/MD-10. Currently, the American cargo airline has 137 aircraft of this model in service with another six soon to be added.
(with information from AP, Reuters and EFE)
