Last Wednesday, a Thai Smile Airways Airbus A320 made an emergency landing in Phuket at 1pm after suffering an engine failure. The aircraft made a hard landing resulting in a ‘tail strike’.
The Phuket Information Centre says that the A320 made a “hard landing” with a tailstrike on the runway, causing damage to the landing strip and the rear of the plane. Fortunately, the pilot was able to bring the plane to a stop and all passengers got off the plane without incident or injury. The incident happened around 1pm.
But, the runway had to be closed down for repairs, delaying around 20 flights. The runway was closed for approximately an hour to repair the damage to the runway.
Despite the incident, the Airports of Thailand Phuket branch, which manages Phuket International Airport, and Thai Smile, have yet to address the incident publicly. However, the Phuket Information Centre posted on Facebook that the Thai Smile Airbus A320 is awaiting inspection and repair.
A tail strike happens with the plane makes a sudden landing and the nose of the aircraft is too high, resulting in the back of the plane scraping on the runway. A tail strike can also happen on take off in extremely rare cases.
It was also announced in recent days that Thai Smile is likely to merge with its parent company, Thai Airways, after 8 successive years of losses, amounting to 16 billion baht.
This week’s Thai Smile incident comes after another major incident with a flight taking off from Phuket earlier this month.
On February 4, a Russian charter plane’s engine caught fire before takeoff at Phuket International Airport. The 309 passengers and 12 crew on board the 26 year old Boeing 767-306ER, operated by Azur Air, were forced to evacuate the aircraft.
Footage from the scene showed flames bursting from the right engine of the Russian plane before takeoff was stopped. Passengers reported hearing a loud bang, and the plane was close to taking off at 120 miles per hour when the problem arose. The incident resulted in chaotic flight delays that affected as many as 47 flights out of Phuket.
PHOTO: Azur Air Boeing 767 engine catches fire during take off at Phuket Airport