A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 277 passengers and 11 crew members caught fire while landing at Kathmandu airport on Monday, forcing passengers to evacuate down emergency slides.

The flight, which took off from Istanbul, caught fire after there was a spark in the right landing gear, according to Gyanendra Bhul, a spokesman at Nepal’s civil aviation authority.

The incident caused the closure of the airport’s only runway for almost two hours in the morning but it has since been reopened. 

Several inbound flights were put on hold while the runway was cleared. 

‘Technical inspections of the aircraft have been initiated by our teams. Initial ​assessments indicate ​that ⁠the smoke was caused by a technical malfunction in a hydraulic ​pipe,’ Yahya Ustun, the airline’s ​senior ⁠vice president, said on X. 

Video circulating online shows thick grey smoke emerging from the plane’s right landing gear as it touches down in Nepal’s capital.

An evacuation took place straight away, with passengers leaving the aircraft via emergency slides.

The Himalayan nation is home to some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks and terrain that poses a challenge even to accomplished pilots. 

A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 277 passengers and 11 crew members caught fire while landing at Kathmandu airport today, but no one was hurt

The flight, which took off from Istanbul, caught fire after there was a spark in the right landing gear, according to Gyanendra Bhul, a spokesman at Nepal’s civil aviation authority

The Himalayan nation is home to some of the world’s most remote and tricky runways, flanked by snow-capped peaks and terrain that poses a challenge even for accomplished pilots

‘All aboard are safe, the rescue part is over. We are now investigating the accident,’ Bhul told AFP. 

A string of crashes as well as the European Union’s decision to blacklist all Nepalese airlines prompted government officials last year to announce plans to install new radar and weather monitoring systems.

Following the incident, evacuation procedures were initiated immediately, as passengers exited the aircraft down emergency slides

In 2015, a Turkish Airlines aircraft with 224 passengers skidded off the Kathmandu runway.

The passengers were unhurt but the accident led to a runway closure for four days and saw scores of international flights cancelled. 

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