A passenger plane operated by Cambodia Angkor Air went off the runway as it landed at Ho Chi Minh City’s airport on Saturday evening but no one was injured during the incident, local Vietnamese media reported yesterday.
The plane, which was arriving from Phnom Penh with 21 passengers, experienced strong crosswinds on the runway and slid off, coming to rest on unpaved dirt, according to newspaper Tuoi Tre. Passengers and crew were quickly evacuated and the plane was towed to a hangar for inspection.
The runway was closed but reopened two hours later, the paper said, and the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam is investigating.
The plane was built in January 2010 and had a technical check-up on March 23. The airline had told Vietnamese media that the flight captain had logged 6,600 hours of flight time.
Neither Cambodia Angkor Air nor the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam were available for comment. The Tan Son Nhat International Airport’s emergency management office declined to comment.
Soy Sokhan, an undersecretary of state at the Secretariat of Civil Aviation in Cambodia, confirmed the news, but said he had only heard about it through secondhand sources.
