An Alliance Air flight from Calcutta to Bhubaneswar, carrying 52 passengers, made an emergency landing at Calcutta airport on Wednesday morning, airport officials said.

The pilot of the flight detected hydraulic failure in the aircraft after it had flown about 64 nautical miles or around 119km south from Calcutta.

“The pilot informed the air traffic control about the snag and went another 10 nautical miles (around 19 kilometres) and then returned,” said an airport official.

The flight made a safe landing at 11.39am, said the official.

Hydraulics control the aircraft’s movement, said a pilot.

“At that time, the main runway was closed for maintenance and only the secondary runway was operational. The work was stopped on an emergency basis and the main runway was made operational to allow the aircraft to land,” said an official.

Any snag-hit aircraft needs a big runway to land safely.

Also, had the aircraft used the secondary runway and failed to vacate the runway on it’s own then flight operations could have been disrupted, the official pointed out.

According to airport officials, the snag led to cancellation of Alliance Air’s Calcutta-Bhubaneswar and Bhubaneswar-Calcutta flights.

The airline’s flights between Bhubaneswar and Raurkela and Bhubaneswar-Jharsuguda were also cancelled, the officials said.