The Moldovan pilots of a Saab 2000 aircraft learned they had a problem with their landing gear when they were only 10 kilometres from their destination airport in western Romania on Saturday.
The pilots alerted aviation authorities at Timisoara International Airport that their front landing gear was stuck and spent the better part of the next two hours dumping fuel from their aircraft, preparing for an emergency landing.
As emergency crews awaited the worst, with at least 10 ambulances and three fire engines standing by, the pilots successfully landed the Carpatair plane and its 47 passengers on a 200-metre-long bed of foam that firefighters had laid out for them.
"We did our job without feeling like heroes," Iurie Oleacov, one of the plane's two pilots, told reporters Saturday.
"We weren't scared, we are trained for these kinds of situations...All the passengers are OK. They were calm."
Romanian border police said the plane was carrying 11 Romanians, 23 Moldovans, nine Italians, two Greeks and two Germans as passengers. The crew members were Moldovan.
Timisoara ambulance chief Iancu Leonida said the passengers and four crew members on board the plane were badly shaken by their perilous, but ultimately safe, landing.
"There are no injured people, although some might have minor scratches, but they are very scared and traumatized," Leonida said. "They are being given medical care."
Airport spokesperson Carmen Stoica said the plane had arrived at the airport from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.
Carpatair vice president Dan Andrei said that "when it landed, the plane came down on the side wheels; it braked sharply and at a low speed it came on its front belly, while the front landing gear remained stuck."
The airline said its two pilots, the 37-year-old Oleacov and 47-year-old Leonid Babischi, were highly experienced.
Following the emergency landing, the airport remained closed for more than two hours and a Romanian Transportation Ministry team investigated the incident.
Recent aircraft incidents
The emergency landing at the Romanian airport follows several major incidents that occurred in close proximity to airports in recent weeks.
On Feb. 25, a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crashed into a field just short of the runway at Amsterdam's main airport, killing nine people and injuring more than 100 others.
On Feb. 20, a Ukrainian cargo plane crashed during takeoff from an airport in Luxor, Egypt. Five crew members died when the Russian-made Antonov An-12 cargo plane crashed.
On Feb. 12, a Dash-8 Q400 aircraft plunged from the sky, landing on a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., just outside the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. It was only minutes from making its landing.
Fifty people died as a result of the Buffalo crash, including one person who was in the home that was struck by the falling plane.
In January, a US Airways Airbus A320 reported hitting a flock of birds shortly after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport and was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. All of the 155 people on board the plane survived.
With files from The Associated Press
