NEW DELHI: Nearly 140 people on board Air India's Delhi-Jammu flight had a narrow escape on Friday afternoon when the plane could not stop in time on the runway and went into the kuccha area at the end of the small airstrip in Jammu.The aircraft had 134 passengers on board when the 23-year-old Airbus A-320 (VT-ESL) touched down in Jammu. "Preliminary information is that the pilots applied emergency braking, but the plane did not stop on the runway and overshot it. Four tyres got deflated. Passengers were evacuated using emergency chutes," said an official. All passengers are learnt to be safe.An airline spokesman said the flight (AI 821) took off from Delhi at 11am: "It experienced tyre bust while landing in Jammu at 12.15pm. All 134 passengers on board were evacuated and are safe. All necessary procedures were followed." Jammu -along with Patna airport -has critically short runways where there is no margin for error.AI was going to soon retire the classic A-320, which was among the first batch of planes the erstwhile Indian Airlines ad received in December 1994. While the plane was towed to the tarmac by Friday eve ning, flight operations are likely to begin from Saturday morning only as the airport doesn't operate after sunset.In fact, earlier this year, IAF had asked airlines to station aircraft removal kits and trained personnel at its airports as sensitive defence airstrips are often blocked by planes of schedule carriers that get stuck there due to technical reasons for several hours. IAF had warned that if airlines failed to do so, their permission to operate flights to airports run by it -Jammu, Srinagar, Pune and Chandigarh -could be cancelled this summer.Schedule Indian carriers operate regular flights to about 20 defence airfields that have a civil enclave or passenger terminal. These include IAF bases like Gorakhpur, Allahabad and Bikaner, and Naval bases like Goa's Dabolim and Vishakhapatnam.All these airports have only one runway. If a plane gets stuck there, the forces are unable to operate their fighter jets - something that has security implications.

Stay updated with all the Latest Jammu headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.