Some of the accidents Biman Bangladesh Airlines met over the years including the latest one in Sylhet yesterday occurred as aeroplanes skidded off the runways.

Yesterday morning, an F-28 aircraft skidded off the slippery runway of Sylhet airport and fell into a ditch, 100 feet from the runway.

Earlier on August 5, 1984, a Fokker F-27 Friendship 600 aircraft of the national flag carrier crashed killing 49 people on board, the highest number of casualties so far. The aircraft fell into water, 550 metres off the runway.

On February 10, 1972, five crew members on board a Biman flight were killed when a Douglas DC-3 aircraft crashed. It was the country's first air accident.

Four crew members of a Fokker F-27 flight escaped unhurt when it crashlanded in a field near Savar Bazar during a test flight on November 18, 1979. The accident occurred as both engines of the aircraft caught fire while landing from an altitude of 8000 feet on completion of the test flight.

On December 22, 1997 a Fokker-28 with 89 people aboard crashlanded in Sylhet, leaving 17 people injured. The aircraft landed on its belly in a paddy field, 3 km from the runway, failing to land at Sylhet Airport due to heavy fog.

An Airbus with 220 passengers including nine children on board narrowly averted an accident just before take-off from Sylhet Airport on February 8 this year. Detecting a mechanical fault, the pilot of the Sylhet-Dhaka flight immediately aborted the take-off and brought the aircraft back to the terminal.

On April 2, 2003, a severe storm with a wind speed of up to 111 km per hour, damaged three Airbus A-310s, a Boeing-737 and a Fokker F-28 aircraft at Zia International Airport in Dhaka.

Moreover, an Air Parabat (private airliner) flight from Ishurdi Airport crashlanded on its belly in a field near Savar due to some problems in the two-engine Walter M-601E plane on June 27, 1998. Five crew and two passengers on board escaped unhurt.

Moreover, two trainee pilots died when a Cessna C-150 training flight of Parabat's flying academy crashed on September 27, 1998.

Before independence, a Cargolux, Canada Air CL-44J flight crashed into a farmhouse near Dhaka Airport while taking off on December 2, 1970.

A Macdonald Douglas-built DC-3 aircraft of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) crashed in Charlakhi island in the Bay of Bengal, killing all the 20 passengers and four crew on July 1, 1957.