WARSAW (Reuters) – Warsaw’s Chopin Airport was re-opened on Wednesday at around 2230 GMT/1730 ET following a four-hour closure after an aircraft of Polish national carrier LOT [LOT.UL] with 63 people on board made an emergency landing on its belly due to its wheels’ failure.
“Nothing happened to passengers,” the airport said in a statement. The plane, Bombardier Dash Q400, had been flying from Krakow to Warsaw.
There were 59 passengers and four crew members on board.
State news agency PAP said that the plane crew was signalling a chassis failure. During the landing manoeuvre it was forced to close down its front wheels, PAP also said.
The last time Warsaw airport witnessed an emergency landing on the aircraft’s belly was in 2011, when LOT’s Boeing 767-300ER flying from Newark was unable to extend its wheels. There were no casualties.
(Reporting by Pawel Sobczak and Marcin Goclowski, Editing by William Maclean and Diane Craft)
