Pilot safely lands plane on its nose after front wheels fail to deploy

A pilot managed to successfully land a plane on its nose after the landing gear failed to deploy.

All 82 passengers and seven crew members left the plane safely despite the plane sending up sparks as it scraped along the runway.

The pilot managed the miraculous landing by coming in on the back wheels only at the airport in Myanmar.

As the nose tilted down and touched the tarmac, it had already lost enough speed to avoid disaster.

It happened at Mandalay International Airport today after a flight from the capital Yangon.

Kyaw San, a spokesman for the airport, said the pilot informed the control tower before landing that he was unable to pull down the nose wheels.

A statement on the airline’s Facebook page explained that the plane’s EICAS – Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System – indicated a failure of the front landing gear to deploy.

The pilot tried a backup emergency procedure to pull down the wheels but that was unsuccessful. The aircraft did two fly-bys past the tower for air controllers to check visually whether the wheels had deployed.

The captain followed emergency procedures to dump fuel to reduce the landing weight, and made a safe landing at 9:09am, said the statement.

Video apparently was shot by one of the passengers and posted online showed an urgent but orderly evacuation of the passengers and crew. Passengers were seen walking away from the plane across the airfield, several of them smiling.