In an unfortunate incident, a cargo plane from West Atlantic reportedly overshot the runway as it landed at France’s Montpellier airport on Saturday. As you can see in the images below, the plane finally came to a stop at a nearby lake with its nose and engines immersed in it. The incident led to the closure of the airport for about two and a half days, during which the investigation authorities managed to safely secure the aircraft from the lake. During this time, all of the flights scheduled for this airport faced some delays, and some of the flights were even canceled and diverted to other airports.
Montpellier airport is considered one of the busiest airports among France’s ten airports, with an estimated average traffic of 197,000 per month during the peak season. However, this airport is located at a distance of about four miles from France’s metropolis. It should be noted that the aircraft in question was a Boeing 737, and fortunately, there were no casualties at all. Moreover, there were three crew members present in the cargo plane at the time of the incident, and they successfully managed to exit the plane without any injuries.
Coupled with this, France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has released images of the airplane in a Twitter post that clearly depicts how badly the plane overshot the runway and, at last, submerged its nose and engines into water. As of now, the investigative authorities are conducting a detailed inspection of the case and determining the factors that caused the incident. The airport authorities also called around sixty firefighters in order to cope with any uncertainty.
Right after the incident, the airport issued an English message circulatory on their official website, which states, “A technical incident prevents normal operation closure of Montpellier airport.” The website further provided information regarding the cancellation of flights and the diversion of flights to Marseille. It has to be noted that about 21 commercial flights were scheduled for Saturday, the day on which the incident occurred, but unfortunately, all of them had to face some issues.