A Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane has skidded off the runway at Myanmar’s Yangon on Wednesday (May 8).

The aircraft skidded off the runway while landing at the Yangon International Airport amid bad weather around 6.30pm Bangladesh time, said Biman spokesperson Shakil Meraj.
“Flight BG060 left Dhaka at 3.45pm and skidded off the runway due to bad weather. The plane was carrying 29 passengers, two pilots and two cabin crews,” said Meraj, the general manager for public relations.

Pictures from Myanmar showed the crumpled Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft lying on the grass at the side of the runway.

Bangladesh Ambassador Manjurul Karim Khan Chowdhury said that several on board the flight suffered “minor injuries” and that they have been taken to the North Okkalapa General Hospital in Yangon.
“Embassy officials have already reached there,” he told Bangla Tribune.

According to Yangon-based Biman officials, at least 20 people out of the 33 on board the plane were injured.

Corporal Zaw Min Oo of the Myanmar fire department told Reuters at least a dozen men and four women were being treated at the hospital.

A spokesman for Myanmar's Department of Civil Aviation declined to comment, saying the department had not received a report of the incident from the ground, says the Reuters report.

“One pilot, an air hostess and nine passengers were slightly injured,” a police officer at the airport told an international news agency, asking not to be named.

“It happened near Terminal 3 where it fell onto the cargo runway as it landed,” he added, saying that the nose and both wings were damaged.

Yangon International Airport did not confirm the crash but announced that heavy rain had caused them to suspend “runway operations until further notice”.

Other incoming flights were diverted to the capital Naypyidaw.

People on board were from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Canada, China, India, France and Switzerland, reported The Straits Times.

Bangladesh's Biman flies between Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, and Bangladesh's capital Dhaka four days a week.

Civilian airline accidents are relatively rare in Myanmar although there has been a series of crashes of military aircraft. Three fighter pilots were killed last year in three separate crashes.

Bad weather caused a military plane to crash into the Andaman sea in 2017 with 122 people on board, one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the country’s history.