Chinese MA60 planes grounded by Myanmar over safety concerns

Safety checks to be carried out after two incidents involving the aircraft  

Tuesday, 11 June, 2013, 3:34pm, Agence France-Presse in Yangon  

Rescuers and officials inspect the damaged Chinese-made Xian MA60 turboprop that overshot the end of the runway in Monghsat, in Shan State, May 2013. Photo: AFP

Myanmar has grounded its Chinese-made MA60 planes for safety checks following two landing incidents involving the aircraft in the past month, a senior official said on Tuesday.

An MA60 carrying about 60 passengers skidded off a runway at a domestic airport in southern Myanmar on Monday but nobody was injured. In mid-May an MA60 overshot the end of a runway at an airport in eastern Shan State, injuring two people.

“I think the accidents happened because of system failure. We will check all the systems. That’s why we stopped the operation of the planes,” Tin Naing Tun, director general of the Civil Aviation Department, told AFP.

“The systems also showed warnings before,” he added.

He said state-owned Myanma Airways operated three turbo-prop MA60 planes.

The same type of aircraft crash-landed at an airport in eastern Indonesia on Monday, leaving two people with minor injuries.

In May 2011 an MA-60 operated by Indonesia’s Merpati Nusantara crashed in West Papua province, killing 25 people.

Following that accident, Indonesian authorities banned the plane - manufactured by Xi’an Aircraft Industrial - from landing at three airports with difficult approaches.

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1258479/chinese-ma60-planes-grounded-myanmar-over-safety-concerns