Lufthansa plane that blocked Mumbai airport towed away

Aircraft's tyres had burst when it touched down at Mumbai Friday night, causing flight delays and diversions

The Lufthansa Airbus A330 plane that suffered a tyre burst on Friday night, bringing Mumbai Airport's main runway to a halt, was towed away Saturday evening.

Although the secondary runway was in use, the incident resulted in delays and diversions of flights.

The incident took place after the Lufthansa aircraft from Munich carrying 163 passengers touched down at Mumbai airport at around 10:45 pm. Four tyres of the aircraft's landing gear were damaged and it was unable to vacate the runway. However, the airline claimed that none of the passengers were injured, though they subsequently had to be deplaned.

Lufthansa said it cancelled the return flight (LH765) to Munich scheduled for Saturday from the city. The 223 passengers who were to fly that route, had to be booked on other flights.

The incident resulted in delays and diversions. A Cathay Pacific cargo aircraft was diverted to Hyderabad. At least three flights were hit, including those of Singapore Airlines (Mumbai-Singapore), Air India and United Airlines (Mumbai-Newark). The Newark-bound flights are 15 hour non stop flights and require a longer take off run which is not available on the secondary runway. Singapore Airlines' Airbus A380 aircraft do not use the secondary runway. A few other flights to Europe had to off-load cargo in order to operate from the secondary runway.