VIETNAM – An airline crew has been suspended after landing a passenger jetcarrying more than 200 passengers on the wrong runway.

Vietnam Airlines Flight VN7344 from Ho Chi Minh City touched down on arunway still under construction and soon to be Nha Trang Cam RanhInternational’s second landing strip. The runway is not yet connected tothe airport and it remains unclear how the carrier will retrieve thestranded Airbus A321.

During landing, the aircraft’s engines sucked in “a number of foreignobjects from the runway surface”, according to the Aviation Herald, andsuffered minor damage.

“Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority rated the occurrence a seriousincident, suspended the flight crew, and opened an investigation,” thespecialist news site said.

It is believed weather and conditions were good at the time of theincident, which took place on Sunday.

Tracking data from FlightRadar24.com shows the aircraft landing parallel toCam Ranh’s single operational runway. The second runway is scheduled toopen later this year.

Telegraph Travel has contacted Vietnam Airlines for comment. The airline isthe Vietnamese flag carrier, flying to 64 destinations around the worldincluding London Heathrow. It was founded in 1956.

Misidentifying runways is not unheard of in aviation, with the globalgoverning body, the ICAO, issuing guidelines on how runways not in useshould be painted with a large X to avoid confusion.

In 2014, a Lufthansa aircraft flying from Frankfurt to Katowice in Polandwas cleared to land on runway 27 but instead touched down on a parallelstrip adjacent to the runway.

In 2000 a Singapore Airlines 747 attempted to take off on the wrong runwayduring a typhoon at Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan only to crash intoconstruction equipment, killing 81 of the 179 on-board.