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HONG KONG: A cargo aircraft skidded off a Hong Kong runway and collided with a security patrol car before both fell into the sea early Monday, killing the two people in the car, authorities said. The plane’s four crew members were unhurt.
The Boeing 747, flown by Turkiye-based ACT Airlines, was landing at Hong Kong International Airport around 3:50 a.m. on arrival from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The aircraft was being operated under lease by Emirates, a long-haul carrier based in Dubai.
The captains did not seek help before landing and had taxied about halfway down the runway before skidding off it to the left, Steven Yiu, the airport authority’s executive director in airport operations, said during a press conference.
“The patrol car absolutely did not rush onto the runway. It was the plane that went off the runway and crashed into the patrol car outside the fence,” he said.
When rescue crews arrived, the plane was broken into two parts, floating in the sea, and the four crew members were waiting to be rescued at its open door, said Yiu Men-yeung, a fire services official.
The four crew members had no apparent injuries, said Tong Sze-ho, acting senior assistant chief ambulance officer of the fire services department.
Rescuers dove into the sea and found the two security workers trapped in the car after a 40-minute search, Yiu Men-yeung said.
Local television images at midmorning showed the aircraft partially submerged just off the edge of the airport’s sea wall. The aircraft’s front half and cockpit were visible above water but the tail end appearing to have broken off. Two boats, possibly with search and rescue personnel, were near the aircraft.
The crash occurred on the north runway of Hong Kong’s airport, one of Asia’s busiest. That runway remained closed, while the two other runways at the airport continue to operate. Steven Yiu said flights at the airport would be unaffected.
Weather was suitable at the time the plane landed and the cause of the crash was being investigated, he said.
The Air Accident Investigation Authority classified the case as an accident, with the investigation to look into multiple factors, including the flight’s system, operation and maintenance.
The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder were being sought.
Emirates said the Boeing 747 freighter flying as EK9788 was wet leased and operated by ACT Airlines. In wet leases, the company supplying the plane also provides the crew, maintenance and insurance. Emirates said there was no cargo on board.
The aircraft was 32 years old, according to Flightradar24.
Hong Kong International Airport was built on reclaimed land by merging two smaller islands north of Hong Kong’s Lantau Island in the South China Sea, at the mouth of the Pearl River. The edge of the north runway lies only a few hundred meters (yards) from the water, while the other two runways are even closer.
Emirates, the Dubai-based long haul carrier, is known for its passenger flights coming out of Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel.
However, it also operates a thriving cargo business out of Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central, the sheikhdom’s second airport where it plans a $35 billion improvement over the coming decade. The ACT Airlines’ flight had taken off from Al Maktoum, known as DWC.
Emirates, owned by a sovereign wealth fund in the city-state, noted in its most-recent annual report that it had added two wet-leased Boeing 747s “to serve surging customer demand.” Emirates has some 260 aircraft in its fleet, the majority either Boeing 777s or double-decker Airbus A380s.

LA PAZ: Bolivians on Sunday elected a pro-business center-right senator as their new president, ending two decades of socialist rule that have left the South American nation deep in economic crisis.
With 97 percent of ballots counted, Rodrigo Paz had 54.5 percent of the vote compared to 45.4 percent for his rival, right-wing former interim president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) said.
Paz, the 58-year-old son of a former president, has vowed a “capitalism for all” approach to economic reform, with decentralization, lower taxes and fiscal discipline mixed with continued social spending.
With dollars and fuel in short supply and annual inflation at more than 20 percent, weary voters snubbed the Movement Toward Socialism party founded by former president Evo Morales in a first electoral round in August.
Bolivia is enduring its worst economic crisis in decades, with long queues now a common sight at gas stations.
“We hope the country improves,” homemaker Maria Eugenia Penaranda, 56, said, bundled up against the cold as she cast her vote in La Paz, about 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) above sea level.
“We cannot make ends meet. There is a lot of suffering. Too much,” she told AFP.

Sunday’s election closes out an economic experiment marked by initial prosperity funded by Morales’s nationalization of gas reserves.
The boom was followed by bust, notably critical shortages of fuel and foreign currency under outgoing leader Luis Arce.
Successive governments under-invested in the country’s hydrocarbons sector, once the backbone of the economy.
Production plummeted and Bolivia almost depleted its dollar reserves to sustain a universal subsidy for fuel that it also cannot afford to import.

Patience ‘running out’ 

Analyst Daniela Osorio of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies told AFP that Bolivians’ patience was running out.
Once the election is over, she warned, “if the winner does not take measures to help the most vulnerable, this could lead to a social uprising.”
Paz faces an uphill task, inheriting an economy in recession, according to the World Bank.

He had promised to maintain social programs while stabilizing the economy, but economists have said the two things are not possible at the same time.
Like Quiroga, Paz also proposed cutting the universal fuel subsidy, keeping it only for public transportation.

‘Difficult to heal’ 

“If the people of Bolivia grant me the opportunity to be president,” Paz said as he voted Sunday, “my format will be that of consensus.”
Paz will not have a party majority in Congress, meaning he will need to make concessions to get laws passed.
Outside of Congress, the new president will also face stiff opposition from Morales, who remains popular especially among Indigenous Bolivians, but was constitutionally barred from seeking another term.
On Sunday, Morales told reporters the two candidates each represent only “a handful of people in Bolivia, they do not represent the popular movement, much less the Indigenous movement.”
Morales is the target of an arrest warrant for human trafficking over an alleged sexual relationship with a minor — an accusation he denies.
Arce is due to leave office on November 8 after serving a single presidential term that began in 2020.
Bolivia’s constitution allows for two terms, but he did not seek reelection.
Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (1200 GMT) and closed eight hours later. Nearly eight million people were eligible to cast ballots and voting is mandatory.