Nepal’s main international airport was forced to close on Monday after a flight operated by Turkish Airlines caught fire as it landed. Nobody on board was hurt. Flames and smoke poured from the right-side undercarriage as the Istanbul service touched down at Tribhuvan International in Kathmandu. Airport authorities said emergency crews swiftly brought the fire under control and that all 277 people on the Airbus A330 disembarked safely. Operations were suspended Monday morning, with multiple inbound flights placed in holding patterns while officials investigated and worked to reopen the airport’s sole runway. Plane crashes occur with some regularity in Nepal, where mountainous geography combines with unpredictable weather to create difficult aviation conditions. A similar incident in 2015 saw another Turkish Airlines flight slide off a fog-shrouded Kathmandu runway during landing, leaving the airport closed for days. Everyone aboard escaped without injury on that occasion, and the damaged aircraft was eventually hauled away and repurposed as a museum exhibit.
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