Plane with 49 aboard crash-lands in New Zealand

DPA

WELLINGTON - Forty-six passengers and three crew escaped injury Thursday when the nose-wheel of an aircraft collapsed on landing at an airport near Blenheim on New Zealand\’s South Island.

The plane, operated by Air Nelson, a subsidiary of Air New Zealand, was flying from the capital Wellington across Cook Strait to Nelson, but was diverted to Blenheim because of bad weather at its destination.

The aircraft was a Canadian Bombardier Dash-8 Q300. The TV3 channel carried a CBS report that two other Bombardier aircraft had suffered similar problems on landing in North America in the last four days.

There had been six incidents of landing gear failing on Bombardier aircraft in North America over the last two years, CBS