A plane belonging to Tara Air skidded off the runway after hitting a fence of Manthali Airport in Ramechhap on Monday morning. There were no casualties.

The Dornier plane with the registration mark 9N-AKK hit a fence around 50 metres ahead of the runway approach while landing, causing the pilot to lose control, said Pratap Babu Tiwari, the spokesperson of Tribhuvan International Airport.

The plane then hurtled towards the runway before slipping towards a grassy area to the right of the airstrip, he added. The aircraft, which had taken off from Kathmandu for Lukla at 8:49 am, had been diverted to Manthali due to bad weather. Fourteen foreigners were on board the plane.

Earlier Bhim Raj Rai, the media manager of Yeti Airlines, which owns Tara Air, had said that the incident occurred after one of the tyres of the aircraft burst while landing at 9:38 am.

“There has been a runway excursion at Ramechhap airport involving our Dornier Do228 aircraft,” Yeti Airlines said in Twitter.

The aircraft hit a fence (in photo) around 50 meters ahead of the runway approach, while landing at Manthali Airport in Ramechhap. Post Photo 

Dan Kumari Shrestha was working in a vegetable field close to the runway at the time of the accident.

“Had the plane been flying a bit lower, all five of us working in the filed would have been killed,” she said.

Rudra Shrestha, another witness, said a major crash was averted.

“This incident occurred due to the ignorance of airport officials and the pilot,” he said. The plane, according to him, was flying below the normal altitude.

Flights to Lukla from Manthali were halted following the accident. Earlier on April 14, three people were killed when a Summit Air plane collided with two parked helicopters during take-off in Lukla Airport.