Correspondent|A Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane skidded off the runway when it landed in bad weather at Yangon’s international airport on Wednesday (May 8) evening, injuring at least 17 people, including the pilot, officials said.

The Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft was carrying 29 passengers and four crew when it bounced while landing during heavy winds in Myanmar’s commercial capital, according to Bangladesh’s ambassador.

The plane was severely damaged.

The 17 people on flight BG060 who sustained mostly minor injuries were admitted to a local hospital, Manjurul Karim Khan Chowdhury, said.

“The main reason, the pilot told me, was the weather – crosswinds,” he said, “When he was trying to land… suddenly the aircraft jumped, went up and went down heavily.”

A photo published by the Myanmar Times showed the plane halfway off the runway with its fuselage apparently broken.

Shakil Miraj, general manager for Biman Bangladesh, also blamed bad weather for the crash.

“It happened near Terminal 3 where it fell onto the cargo runway as it landed,” a police officer at the airport told AFP, asking not to be named. He added that the nose and both wings were damaged.

The airline flies between Yangon and Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka four days a week.

Yangon International Airport announced that heavy rain had caused them to suspend “runway operations until further notice”.

Other incoming flights were diverted to the capital Naypyidaw.

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.