A Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 crashed off the runway when its front wheels collapsed during a bad weather landing

• A Turkish Airlines flight crashed off the runway when its front wheels collapsed during a windy landing in Odessa, Ukraine on Thursday.
• The Boeing 737-800 aircraft suffered damage to its nose as a result, although no passengers or crew were injured.
• The difficult landing was down to weather conditions with "heavy crosswinds" reported as the aircraft approached Odessa Airport, according to online aviation news site Flight Global.
• "Panic erupted. Everyone panicked, even the crew. The plane skidded off the runway and stopped in a field," a passenger told Ukrainian news outlet Strana, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper.
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A Turkish Airlines flight crashed off the runway when its front wheels collapsed during a windy landing in Odessa, Ukraine on Thursday.

Flight TK 467 from Istanbul, Turkey, to Odessa, a port city in the south of Ukraine, struggled to land in heavy winds, aborting its first attempt to land just before touching down, according to a tweet from Turkish Air News, which was present in Odessa after the incident.

Then, during a second landing attempt, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft skidded off the runway when its front wheels, known in the aviation industry as nose gear, collapsed, according to aviation news site Flight Global, which cited airport authorities.

It is not clear exactly what caused the nose gear failure, but images posted to Twitter show the aircraft with its nose on the ground, and tail up in the air. The plane's nose appears to be damaged in the photos.

 

Video posted to Twitter by Russian video news agency Ruptly in the aftermath of the incident shows passengers evacuating the plane using the front inflatable slide:

 "We started descending and the moment the plane touched the ground we felt a strong smell of smoke," a passenger told Ukrainian news outlet Strana, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper.

"Panic erupted. Everyone panicked, even the crew. The plane skidded off the runway and stopped in a field," they added.

All 134 passengers and crew were evacuated from the plane without any injuries, according to a statement from Turkish Airlines. The incident is still under investigation, according to the statement. 

A simulation of the whole incident can be seen below: 

 

The incident in Odessa was one of two involving a Boeing aircraft to make the news in recent days after a Boeing 777 flying out of Los Angeles suffered an engine malfunction causing it to spew flames and forcing an emergency landing of the aircraft just 15 minutes after takeoff.

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