A Turkish Airlines flight from Cape Town to Istanbul was forced to be diverted to Joburg due to an unspecified problem, Bloomberg News reported.
According to SA People News, Flight TK45 was declared an emergency at 7:45pm on Thursday evening after its landing gear would not retract.
The Airbus A330-343 did patterns around Cape Town, burning fuel, before the decision was made to divert the plane to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport due to the increased size of the runway.
Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) has not yet commented on the incident, but did say that “the airline will issue a press statement soon.”
Bloomberg added that the airline is trying to resolve the issue. A Turkish Airlines spokesperson declined to be named in line with company policy. The spokesperson further declined to provide more details.
KD Brookes told SAPeople: “She flew to Johannesburg with her landing gear out. She landed at 22h36 at OR Tambo with no injuries and followed by emergency vehicles.”
The Aviation Herald reported that the flight “was climbing out of Cape Town’s runway 19 when the crew was unable to retract the landing gear and stopped the climb at FL080. The aircraft entered a hold to work the checklists and burn off fuel.”
Flight data showed that the plane was an Airbus A330-343, flight number TK45. It could be seen circling over waters west of Cape Town at an altitude of around 20 000 feet for some time after taking off, according to flight tracking data on flightradar24.com.
It took off at 6pm local time.