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Tragedy struck early Monday morning at the Hong Kong International Airport after a cargo plane skidded off the runway and plunged into the sea, killing two ground staff members.
The Emirates flight EK9788, which was arriving from Dubai, reportedly veered off course around 3:50 a.m. local time (7:50 p.m. GMT) before colliding with an airport patrol vehicle stationed near the runway, BBC reported.
According to airport officials, the two people in the patrol vehicle — both members of the ground operations team — died instantly. The four crew members onboard the Boeing 747 cargo plane survived the crash.
Authorities have since launched a full investigation into what went wrong, describing it as one of Hong Kong’s deadliest aviation incidents in recent years.
Airport operations director Steven Yiu said the patrol car had been on a service road “at a safe distance from the runway” when the plane unexpectedly turned off its landing path, broke through the fencing, and slammed into the vehicle, pushing it into the sea.
“Normally, a plane is not supposed to turn towards the sea,” Yiu told reporters. “The patrol car definitely did not enter the runway.”
Rescue teams arrived within minutes, and divers later recovered the bodies of the two ground staff — men aged 30 and 41, both experienced employees with seven and twelve years of service respectively.
Images from the scene show the aircraft broken in half, with part of its fuselage submerged in the water. One of its emergency evacuation slides had deployed successfully, helping the crew to escape before they were rescued by firefighters.
In a statement, Emirates confirmed that the plane “sustained damage on landing” but noted that “there was no cargo onboard” and that all crew members are safe.
The plane was being operated under a wet lease by Turkish carrier ACT Airlines, meaning it was flown by their crew but under Emirates’ name.
Hong Kong’s Transport Bureau expressed sadness over the deaths and extended condolences to the victims’ families.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Air Accident Investigation Authority (AAIA) has begun searching for the plane’s black boxes — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — believed to have sunk in the sea near the crash site.
At least 11 cargo flights scheduled for Monday were cancelled as one of the airport’s runways remained closed for investigation.
This marks only the second deadly aviation incident since Hong Kong’s airport relocated from Kai Tak to Chek Lap Kok in 1998. The first occurred in 1999, when a China Airlines passenger jet crash-landed during a typhoon
, killing three people.
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