Kingfisher plane has 2 brushes with death

Chennai: Thirteen passengers and a four- member crew of a Kingfisher aircraft escaped unhurt after the plane landed at Chennai airport with a burst tyre of the nose wheel and skidded along the runway early on Saturday. The incident led to the closure of main runway 25, the only operational runway in Chennai, delaying many international services for two hours.
Officials of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the operational safety wing has taken the incident "very seriously." They suspect the tyre burst might have happened in Trichy, where the plane had tried to land before flying back to Chennai, but the pilot gave the reason as bad weather, not a tyre burst, an official said.
Flight no IT 4343, an ATR model 72-500 took off from Chennai at 10.45pm and rejected the landing approach in the first attempt on Trichy skies due to low visibility. After going around, the plane touched the runway at 11.30 pm. This, an airport source said, could have been a hard landing attempt, after the aircraft overshot the touchdown point. The pilot powered up the engine and flew back to Chennai. A source said the hard landing might have caused the tyre burst and damaged about six metres of the runway in Trichy.
Senior pilots and aviation experts said the pilot would definitely know in case of a tyre burst during landing or take off operations.
An airport official said it was the right decision to fly back to Chennai which has better facilities to handle an emergency, but the Chennai air traffic contrl remained in the dark about the nose wheel condition till the aircraft touched down and skidded.
09/10/11 Arun Janardhanan/Times of India

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Categories: airports Oct 2011, Kingfisher Oct 2011, Safety Oct 2011