Malaysian cargo plane makes emergency landing

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 13, 2007 (AFP)

A Malaysian mail plane crash-landed at an airport on Borneo island on Saturday but nobody was reported injured, the official Bernama news agency said. Kuching airport in Sarawak state was closed for six hours, delaying thousands of passengers, after the Boeing 737-200 missed the runway.

Four people were on the plane from Kuala Lumpur, which was carrying cargo for national postal company Pos Malaysia and operated by Gading Sari Aviation Services.

But no casualties have been reported, Kok Soo Chon, the director general of the Department of Civil Aviation told Bernama. It was not known why the plane came down about a kilometre (0.6 miles) from the runway. "Fragments of the tyres, splinters of engine parts and the right wing were scattered on the runway, forcing the airport authorities to close the airport for clean-up work and to remove the aircraft from the runway," Deputy Transport Minister Douglas Uggah Embas said.

The airport resumed operations at noon after the closure disrupted 16 Malaysia Airlines and 14 Air Asia flights, temporarily stranding some 2,000 passengers, Bernama said.

The plane was flown by an Indonesian pilot, Captain Hartono and took off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 4:00 am.

"It was not carrying any dangerous cargo," Embas said, adding that the civil aviation department was investigating.