Plane skids off runway and into street in Iran
Two people suffered injuries after the plane apparently lost its landing gear.
![](https://www.expressandstar.com/resizer/v2/IYK7TLMAFVGMROUZVSYAZUEBBA.jpg?auth=6a0280a7fcb1283a08d0fd29a9126afe7806c79bcf7d34d319b081819233aacb&width=300&height=225)
An airliner carrying 144 people has skidded off a runway into a street next to an airport in the Iranian city of Mahshahr.
Authorities said two people suffered injuries in the hard landing of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 flown by Caspian Airlines.
Passengers, apparently in shock, calmly exited the aircraft with their carry-on baggage out of a door near the cockpit and another over the plane’s wing, video from Iran’s Civil Aviation Network News showed.
A flight attendant shouted at passengers to calmly walk away as another crew member joined her on the wing.
“We crashed. We crashed but we are unhurt,” a male passenger said in Farsi in the video. “My hand is shaking.”
![Passengers walk off a crashed plane in Mahshahr, Iran](http://content.assets.pressassociation.io/2020/01/27101509/347b8592-ae0d-45c7-b9ff-ec0c18101ff2.jpg)
Provincial airport director Mohammad Reza Rezanian said all of the passengers had been safely taken off the plane, which had been flying a route from the Iranian capital, Tehran, some 380 miles north-east of Mahshahr.
The plane carried 136 passengers and eight crew members, authorities said.
It seems tragedy was narrowly avoided, however, as images from the scene showed the plane had ground to a halt not far from a populated area.
The incident comes as Iran is still coping with the aftermath of the accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran.
The plane was shot down by the Revolutionary Guard earlier this month amid heightened tensions with the United States, killing all 176 people onboard.
Iranian state television said the plane involved in the incident came in harder than usual and lost its landing gear as it hit the tarmac.
No landing gear was evident in pictures of the plane after the accident, but it was not immediately clear if it failed to deploy or somehow collapsed as the jet hit the runway at about 9.30am local time.
Officials said the accident is under investigation.