Romanian plane survives emergency

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The plane landed on a foam carpet spread out by firefighters

A small airliner on which the front landing gear jammed has made a dramatic emergency landing in Romania with none of the 51 people aboard injured.

Romanian airline Carpatair praised the skill of the pilots on the flight from Moldova who brought the plane down at Timisoara international airport.

Discovering the fault about 10km (six miles) from the airport, they circled nearly two hours to use up fuel.

The plane landed on the main landing gear, its nose down on the runway.

Fire-fighters created a 200m (200 yard) bed of foam for the plane, a Saab 2000, to land on, to help avoid a fire.

'We're trained for this'

Most of the 47 passengers on the plane, which had been flying from the Moldovan capital Chisinau to Timisoara, were Romanians or Moldovans.

Nine Italians, two Greeks and two Germans were also aboard, Romanian border police said.

"There are no injured people, although some might have minor scratches, but they are very scared and traumatised," Timisoara ambulance chief Iancu Leonida was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

Carpatair said the two Moldovan pilots, Yuri Lyakhov and Leonid Babinsky, were both very experienced.

"We did our job without feeling like heroes," Mr Lyakhov later told reporters.

"We weren't scared. We are trained for these kinds of situations."

The Timisoara airport was closed for two and a half hours as a result of the incident, AP adds.