A Myanmar pilot safely landed his aircraft on Sunday despite a landing gear failure, earning him plaudits as a hero.
Dramatic footage circulated on social media shows the Myanmar National Airlines plane touching down at Mandalay International Airport on its rear wheels before lowering its nose onto the tarmac.
Due to a lack of front wheels to support it, the plane slid on its nose before coming to a stop.
Passengers said smoke filled the aircraft as it landed — but no injuries have been reported.
According to the AFP news agency, 89 people, including seven crew members, were on board the Embraer-190 jet. It had flown about 400 miles north from the Myanmar capital of Yangon to Mandalay, a historic city popular with tourists.
Myanmar officials said the pilot, Captain Myat Moe Aung, had been preparing to land the plane when a “technical fault” prevented him from dropping the front landing gear.
Ye Htut Aung of Myanmar’s Civil Aviation Department told AFP that the pilot circled the airport twice as he tried to deploy the gear both manually and using the plane’s computer system.
When that failed, he burned fuel, as emergency procedures call for, before landing the plane, Myanmar National Airlines said in a statement, according to Reuters. The flight crew then performed an emergency evacuation of the jet.
This is the second aviation accident in Myanmar in under a week.
On Wednesday, a Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane skidded off the runway at Yangon International Airport during a storm. Eleven passengers were injured in that incident.