Biman flight lands after wheels fright

Chittagong, July 8 (bdnews24.com) – A Biman flight from Dubai with 253 people on board Sunday survived a close call as it hovered in the sky for half an hour before landing safely at the airport.

The pilot of BG-048 flight discovered that the front wheels would not open up just before the plane was to touch down at the Shah Amanat International Airport at 1:15pm.

Biman's duty officer Shah Alam told bdnews24.com an immediate probe later found the nose landing gears of the DC-10 flight developed technical glitches.

The pilot decided not to land and kept flying around the airport desperately hoping that he could fix the problem, an official at the airport said.

The wheels opened up after frantic maneuvering and the plane landed safely at around 1:45pm, said the official who would not be named.

The plane did not make its scheduled flight to Dhaka for safety reasons and its 83 passengers were flown to the capital at 7:15 in the evening by the BG-083 flight coming from Kuala Lumpur.

The aircraft had overshot the runway by some 200 metres after an engine caught fire at at the same airport earlier on July 1, 2005, a Bimna official said, asking not to be named.

Biman Bangladesh Ailines spokesman Khan Mosharraf Hossain said the DC-10 aircraft that Biman owns has been grounded indefinitely due to technical problems.

Biman has five DC-10s, aged no less than 20 years and bought in 1990, four Airbuses and as many F-28s in its fleet.

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