Turkish airliner makes emergency landing in South Africa

Turkish Airlines

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- A Turkish airline's passenger plane TK45 en route from Cape Town to Istanbul made an emergency landing on Thursday evening in Johannesburg, South Africa, causing no injuries.

While climbing out of Cape Town's runway, the flight crew failed to retract the plane's landing gear, said the Aviation Herald, an aviation incidents website.

Flightradar24, a tracker app, shows the plane is an Airbus A330-343. Soon after finding something wrong, the plane hovered over Cape Town to burn its fuel for a safe landing. It was then diverted to Johannesburg's Oliver Tambo International Airport for landing and made it safely.

"The plane had problems of its landing gear, but landed at 22:36 p.m. (2030 GMT) at OR Tambo with no injuries and followed by emergency vehicles," local aviation expert Stanley Koepka told Xinhua.

The problem of the landing gear is currently under investigation by local engineers.