A passenger jet was making its second attempt to land when it skidded off a foggy runway in Kathmandu, Nepal, one of those on board told NBC News on Wednesday.
Turkish Airlines Flight TK726 had already aborted one landing and spent 30 minutes circling the airport before trying again in "extremely low" visibility, passenger Dikesh Malhotra said.
“It was just going around in circles,” he added. “We knew the runway was close but we couldn’t see anything."
Only one of the 224 people aboard the widebody Airbus A330 was slightly injured and sent to the hospital, authorities said.
"All of our passengers and crew have been safely evacuated and taken to the terminal," Turkish Airlines spokesman Ali Genc said in a statement. "Necessary precautions have been taken for towing the aircraft out of its current place and the relevant work on that issue have started."
Genc said an investigation will look into the exact cause of the incident.
Photos posted to social media showed the plane resting off the runway with what appeared to be a collapsed front landing gear.
Malhotra said the flight had arrived early but aborted its first landing attempt. "The plane didn’t land but started going back up," he said.
Nepalese news site E Kantipur reported that the jet missed the central alignment of the runway during its second landing attempt.
“We knew it wasn’t the runway when it landed," Malhotra said.
Tribhuvan International Airport “has one of the world’s most complicated landing approaches due to surrounding challenging terrain at its location in the Himalayas,” aircraft manufacturer Airbus noted in a 2013 news release.
