Seven injured, including pregnant woman, after China's Joy Air plane skids off runway
Passengers and crew evacuated after Joy Air budget flight swerves onto grass strip upon landing and starts emitting smoke at airport in Fujian
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 11:11pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 11:11pm
Nectar Gan and Laura Zhou
The plane's propellers came to rest on the ground (left) after its hard landing at Fuzhou airport just before noon yesterday. Seven people, including a pregnant woman, were injured.Photos: SCMP Pictures
A domestic budget flight skidded off the runway on landing at Fuzhou airport in Fujian province yesterday, slightly injuring seven passengers, including a pregnant woman.
It marked another accident involving the China-made Modern Ark 60 planes and budget airline Joy Air in recent years.
Flight JR1529 departed from Yiwu in Zhejiang province yesterday morning with 45 passengers and seven crew.
When landing at the Fuzhou Changle International Airport just before noon, it swerved off the runway and onto a grass strip.
Photos posted online by witnesses showed both wings of the aircraft broken after the crash, tilting forward with its propellers resting on the ground. The cause of the hard landing is under investigation.
A passenger told microblog user Fuzhouquan that the undercarriage tires blew when landing.
A worker at the airport fire station told the South China Morning Post that the aircraft emitted smoke after it skidded, and that it was being cooled down.
Seven passengers - six men and a pregnant woman - suffered slight injuries and were taken to hospital.
Two men remained in hospital in stable condition while the other five were discharged, CCTV said.
The airport was shut until 6pm. About 80 flights and over 4,500 travellers were affected.
MA60 twin turboprop planes, designed and manufactured by Xian Aircraft Industrial Corporation, have been involved in a series of air accidents over the past few years. So has the Xian -based budget airline Joy Air, a joint venture by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and China Eastern Airlines that came into operation in 2009.
In February last year, a Joy Air MA60 plane's undercarriage folded in when sliding on landing at Zhengzhou in Henan province, causing the nose of the plane to hit the ground. No one was injured.
Three weeks later, another MA60 plane, owned by a different airline, also experienced a problem with its undercarriage signal light when landing.
After the two incidents, the Xian Aircraft Industrial Corporation temporarily grounded all MA60 planes in China to check their undercarriage systems.
The company said it would apply to resume flying the planes after their safety was ensured.
But the problems soon resurfaced.
In December, another Joy Air MA60 plane had to circle in the air for 11/2 hours before it could land at the Yulin airport in Shaanxi province because of a breakdown of its undercarriage.
Earlier, in June 2013, MA60 planes were involved in two landing mishaps in Indonesia and Myanmar on the same day.
A state-run Merpati Nusantara Airlines plane carrying 50 people landed hard at an airport in eastern Indonesia, slamming both engines onto the runway and injuring nine passengers.
In Myanmar, a domestic Myanmar Airways flight skidded off the runway on landing.
In mid-May that same year, an MA60 plane overshot the end of a runway at an airport in eastern Myanmar, injuring two people.
The Myanmar authorities grounded the MA60 planes for safety checks after the two landing accidents.
In May 2011, another MA60 plane flown by Merpati crashed into the ocean off eastern Indonesia, killing all 25 people on board.
