Thailand's Phuket airport closes runway after Air India Express plane malfunction

Thailand's Phuket airport said on Wednesday it had temporarily closed its runway to remove a disabled Air India Express plane after it experienced a malfunction upon landing.

Air India Express Flight AXB938 arriving from Hyderabad suffered damage to its landing gear as it hit the runway, Phuket airport said in a statement.

The plane "experienced an issue with the nose wheel at Phuket Airport," a spokesperson for Air India Express said, adding: "The crew followed all standard protocols, and guests were deplaned.

There were no casualties and the runway was expected to reopen at 6 p.m. local time (1100 GMT), the airport said.

An image posted on X by Thai state broadcaster MCOT showed part of the aircraft landing gear, with a wheel missing, in direct contact with the runway, with a long, swerving skid mark on the tarmac.

Air India Express, the budget arm of Air India, has a fleet of over 100 Boeing and Airbus aircraft.

India's aviation watchdog reprimanded Air India Express in March last year for not changing the engine parts of an Airbus A320, as directed by the European Union's aviation safety agency, Reuters has reported. It was also criticised for falsifying records to show compliance.

Air India Express reported 95 technical defects from January to November last year, India's civil aviation ministry said in December, the second highest among India's airlines over the period. The ministry did not provide details on the nature of the faults.

Parent Air India, a full-service carrier, has come under intense scrutiny in the last few months after a series of safety lapses and a deadly crash in in Ahmedabad last June that killed 260 people.

Phuket is one of Thailand's busiest gateways, with hundreds of flights daily, including from the Middle East, Europe and Asia, as well as domestic routes.

-Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by David Stanway/Reuters