A sparsely-filled Thai Airways Boeing 747-400 with 97 passengers and 18 crew on board has reportedly slid off Runway 19R while landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand. No reports of injuries have emerged from local reports and Thai Airways vice president for aviation safety, Pratana Patanasiri, commented that the flight was arriving from Guangzhou amid heavy rain but passengers did not sustain injuries. The airline was involved in a similar incident in September 8, 2013 when a Thai Airways Airbus A330-300 also arriving from Guangzhou slid off the runway. In this case 40 passengers were injured, 14 of which required hospitalisation.
This incident is the latest this year following Papua New Guinea’s national airline Air Niugini crash landing into a lagoon off Chuuk Airport, Micronesia on September 28. The Boeing B737-800 crash-landed 450 feet short of the runway and an initial statement from the chairman Sir Kostas Constantinou stated that the 35 passengers and 12 crew were safe and accounted for. It was later announced that an Indonesian passenger’s body had been discovered by divers around the aircraft and the surrounding area. Poor weather conditions were cited again in this event.
The same aircraft model operated by Pegasus Airlines was involved in an incident at Trabzon Airport, Turkey when it slid off the runway and came to a halt on a steep slope descending into the Black Sea. The thick mud saved the aircraft and its 162 passengers and 6 crew with no reports of injuries.