A cargo plane hit a vehicle on the runway at Hong Kong’s airport during landing and skidded into the sea, killing two ground crew workers, authorities have said.<\/p>\n
The plane’s fuselage is partly submerged in water, with large cracks visible and its emergency evacuation slide extended.<\/p>\n
The Boeing 747 cargo plane had arrived from the United Arab Emirates at Hong Kong International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the world for air cargo.<\/p>\n
The plane “deviated from the North Runway after landing and ditched into the sea”, Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department said.<\/p>\n
“Preliminary information indicates that the four crew members on board were rescued and sent to hospital, while two ground staff were affected and fell into the sea,” the department added.<\/p>\n
The incident, which took place at around 3.50am local time (8.50pm Irish time), left the aircraft’s nose resting above water with its tail broken off.<\/p>\n
The plane struck a ground vehicle, which also fell into the sea, authorities said.<\/p>\n
A 30-year-old man aboard the ground vehicle was confirmed dead at the scene while another, aged 41, died after being rushed to hospital.<\/p>\n
The airport’s north runway was temporarily closed, while the other two runways remained operational.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Transport and Logistics Bureau expressed deep concern over the incident, adding that the Air Accident Investigation Authority will “actively investigate the cause of the accident”.<\/p>\n
Helicopters from the Government Flying Service and vessels from the Fire Services Department have been deployed, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
A dozen cargo flights have been cancelled throughout today, but passenger flights appeared to be unaffected, the South China Morning Post reported.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong began flight operations on its third runway last November, with the city’s airport being among the busiest in the world.<\/p>\n
The expansion project cost HK$142 billion (\u20ac15.6 billion) and took eight years of construction, with officials saying it would keep the city’s airport competitive as an aviation hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cargo plane hit a vehicle on the runway at Hong Kong’s airport during landing and skidded into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-92069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}