A plane’s tyre burst at Bajura Airport in Kolti while on the runway earlier this month, leaving the passengers to push the plane off the track.
A video of the great act of teamwork has taken the internet by storm with more than 824,000 views on TikTok.
@kg974848 काेल्टि मा तारा एरोपेलेन को टायर पत्किदा यस्तो छ हालत पुरै प्यासेन्जर लागेर साइड गरेर पनि धनगढी मा आइयो। @kopilagiri30
The video shows passengers teaming up to push the lightweight Tara Air plane off the track in an act of group generosity. Swaths of people stood on either side of the plane, helping it move on the runway after one of the tyres burst.
The clip was also posted on Twitter, where one Nepalese user joked, “Probably only in Nepal.”
सायद हाम्राे नेपालमा मात्र होला ! pic.twitter.com/fu5AXTCSsw
— Samrat (@PLA_samrat) December 1, 2021
According to Nepali journalist Sushil Bhattarai, the twin otter plane belonged to Tara Air and when the aircraft was stranded in the middle of the runway, passengers and security officials came together to move the plane.
Tara Air is a sister company of Yeti Airlines and their spokesperson told Nepalese news site Online Khabar that the aircraft had landed at Bajura Airport from Simkot in Humla when the incident happened.
No facilities were available to drag the plane to the other side, so passengers joined the efforts of the airport officials to move the plane from the taxiway so flight operations could resume.
Then another Tara Air plane from Nepalgunj reached Bajura with tyres and engineers.
The spokesperson added that after fitting the tyres, both the aircrafts landed at Nepalgunj.
The hard-working passengers from Nepal aren’t the only ones to chip in with airline crews when a plane gets stuck.
In late 2014, passengers in Igarka, Siberia got out to help push a plane by its wings when it became stuck in frozen conditions.
This prompted the Russian police to launch an official investigation.
“They pushed the plane as if it was a car that had got stuck, which is categorically forbidden as it can damage the plane’s exterior, for example,” a representative of the local prosecutor’s office told press at the time.
The plane was a Tupolev 134 operated by Katekavia, a subsidiary of Utair, one of Russia’s biggest airlines.
