Passengers get out and push after plane tyres burst
Some 20 passengers exited the plane for the joint effort
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When a small plane in India encountered a burst tyre on landing in Nepal, its passengers generously stepped up to help push it off the runway.
In a video of the incident, posted to the TikTok account @khagendrakhadka6124, some 20 passengers band together to push the small twin-engine, turboprop plane.
The cockpit door is seen to be open as the impromptu ground crew shouts encouragement and instructions.
“When the tyre of Tara Airplane fell in Kalti, it came to Dhangadhi with six passengers on the side,” reads the caption in Nepali, though a local journalist told international press that the incident had happened at the country’s Bajura airport.
The video has already had more than 824,000 views.
The De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter plane was operated by Nepalese airline Tara Air, which, according to its website, has a fleet of six STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) aircraft of this kind.
“This is Nepal, Nepali people have done and shown what no one else has done,” said one commenter in the local language.
“Probably only in Nepal,” joked a viewer on Twitter.
Tara Air flies short hops between popular Nepalese locations such as Lukla and Kathmandu.
Its customers aren’t the only ones to chip in with airline crew duties when a plane has become stuck.
In November 2014, several passengers in Igarka, Siberia got out to help push a plane by its wings when it became stuck in frozen conditions - prompting Russian police to launch an official investigation.
“They pushed the plane as if it was a car that had got stuck, which is categorically forbidden as it can damage the plane’s exterior, for example,” a representative of the local prosecutor’s office told press at the time.
The plane was a Tupolev 134 operated by Katekavia, a subsidiary of Utair, one of Russia’s biggest airlines.
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