An aircraft of budget carrier AirAsia skidded off the runway while landing at Kota Kinabalu airport in Sabah yesterday.

Two passengers were injured when the Boeing 737 with about 100 passengers aboard skidded during bad weather after arriving from Kuala Lumpur, the Star newspaper said in its online edition.

A three year-old boy suffered a broken arm while another passenger had minor injuries, reports said. The remaining passengers and crew escaped unhurt.

The airport had to be closed temporarily due to the incident, civil aviation director-general Kok Soo Choon told Bernama news agency. This resulted in hundreds of passengers being stranded today.

Passengers stranded

National carrier Malaysia Airlines was ferrying some 2,000 stranded passengers out from the country's second-busiest airport on Boeing 737s but was unable to use its wide-bodied Airbuses.

The nosewheel of the AirAsia plane was bogged down in the grass beside the runway after it skidded on landing in heavy rain. Engineers planned to use a crane to move it, Bernama said.

Malaysia Airlines area manager Shauqi Ahmad said the airline had to reschedule 32 flights, including three international flights from Hong Kong, Cebu and Guangzhou.

He said the airline flew out about 1,000 passengers on 13 routine flights by noon today and hoped to get them all out by the end of the day.