MANGALURU: An MiG 27 aircraft of the Indian Air Force on Tuesday, made an emergency landing at the Mangalore international Airport (MIA) at around 5.30 pm. The landing was made after the pilot discovered a technical snag in the aircraft.
Soon after the landing, one of the tyres on the hind wheels of the fighter jet burst and the aircraft veered off to a side of the main runway of the airport.
The aircraft, according to MIA officials was on a routine sortie over the Arabian Sea when the pilot noticed a snag in its hydraulic system. But soon after landing the tyre burst had caused the aircraft to veer. "The incident happened at 5.30 pm on Tuesday. Air Traffic Control had received the emergency landing request from the pilot and within few minutes one of the runway was cleared for the fighter aircraft to land," said J T Radhakrishna, Director, MIA.
The pilot was safe and the aircraft had not sustained any major damage and the engineers attending to the aircraft were confident that the aircraft will be put back into action soon.
This is the first time that MIA had an emergency landing of a fighter aircraft. The incident grounded air traffic at the airport for over two hours. As a result few outgoing domestic flights were delayed. According to airport authorities, due to the tyre burst one of the runways had sustained minor damages.
This is the second emergency landing that has occurred in the MIA in the last 24 hours. On Monday, at 7.30 pm a Mumbai-Kochi commercial airliner -- an airbus 320 had made an emergency landing at MIA due to the problems in the hydraulic system.
Navy air wing engineers flew to MIA from Goa Seabird Naval air base in a special helicopter successfully carried out the repairs of the crippled Navy MiG and have towed it to a secure place.
This has cleared the runway for the normal operations of the MIA. Three incoming flights were diverted to Bengaluru and Kochi. It includes one Dubai flight too said the Airport Director J T Radhakrishna.