Air Asia flight lands safely in Cambodia after circling with stuck landing gear

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - An Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur landed safely in the Cambodian capital Monday after being forced to circle around the airport for about 10 minutes when its landing gear initially failed to deploy, an aviation official said.

There were 130 passengers on board the Airbus A320 which landed at about 4:30 p.m., said Keo Sivorn, head of Flight Safety Operations at Cambodia's Secretariat of Civil Aviation.

«The plane had to circle, flying for about 10 minutes around the airport before its landing gear worked properly,» he said. «Now it has landed safety and all the passengers are fine.

The plane was operated by Malaysia-based Air Asia.
Four fire trucks were standing by in case the plane had trouble on landing, Keo Sivorn added.

He said technicians were inspecting the plane to find out why the landing gear failed and see if it had any other problems.

On June 25, a Russian-made An-24 plane crashed during a storm while flying to the southern coastal town of Sihanoukville, killing all 22 people on board. It had taken off from Siem Reap, the country's main tourist hub and site of the famed Angkor Wat temple complex.

The plane was operated by PMT Air, a small Cambodia airline that began flights in January from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, a new route launched to spur the country's burgeoning tourism industry.

The last major air accident in Cambodia was in 1997, when a Vietnam Airlines TU-134B crashed while trying to land during a rainstorm at Phnom Penh International Airport, killing more than 60 people.