Drama at the airport this morning, with a Bangladesh Biman Airbus A310 flight BG006 to Dhaka having ‘an incident’ on the runway at about 6.30am. The airport was closed for about eight hours, flights inbound were diverted and outbound flights were cancelled. A total of 71 flights were affected, so it will take some time to catch up and clear the backlog. The airport re-opened at 2pm local time.

The good news is that there were only fourteen minor injuries and all on board were evacuated safely.

A Gulf News reader sent in this photograph, which shows the aircraft nose-down on the runway after the wheel collapsed.

The story is still unfolding as I write this and there are slightly different reports as to exactly what happened. Reports say that the pilot aborted takeoff, that the aircraft skidded off the runway, that engines were on fire, but exact details haven’t yet been released.

Emergency crews were on the scene within one minute, according to reports and all 236 passengers and crew on board were safely evacuated.

An accident enquiry has been started of course.