Pilot's Skill Helps 82; passengers 7 Crews Plane Land Safely without Front Wheels.

Image:There were 82 passengers and seven crew on the plane. Pic: Nay Min via Reuters.

A plane has landed in Myanmar using only its back wheels after the front wheels failed to deploy.

Eighty-two passengers and seven crew were on the Myanmar National Airlines plane when it made an emergency landing at Mandalay International Airport on Sunday.

Flight UB103 had flown from Myanmar's capital Yangon and was coming in to land when the pilot told the control tower that the front wheels could not be pulled down.

A back-up emergency procedure was unsuccessful so the pilot flew past the tower twice for air controllers to confirm whether the wheels had deployed.

The pilot also dumped fuel to reduce the weight of the Brazilian-made Embraer 190-LR before landing safely on its back wheels just after 9am.

Its nose scraped the runway and sent off sparks as it came to a stop.

Image:The plane was evacuated after it landed. Pic: Nay Min via Reuters

U Ye Htut Aung, deputy director general of Department of Civil Aviation, told the Myanmar Times that the problem was a mechanical error and there was no serious damage to the plane because the pilot was skilled

The passengers were also not injured, he added.

Smaller aircraft were able to use the runway after about two and a half hours and the runways were expected to be open for larger aircraft late in the afternoon