Another Malaysia Airline flight diverted to Hong Kong for emergency landing after electricity generator fails

Scare: A Malaysian Airlines flight was diverted to Hong Kong on Monday due to an electrical problem (Stock image)

A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 271 people made an emergency landing in Hong Kong after an electricity generator failed, the airline has said.

The emergency landing, made while the aircraft was flying from Kuala Lumpur to the South Korean capital, Seoul, came after yet another Malaysia Airlines jet ran into trouble after hitting a flock of birds while it was landing in the Nepali capital, Kathmand, on Friday.

The birds shattered the windshields and caused some damage to the wheel housing, but the aircraft was able to land safely.

In a statement today the airline said Flight MH066 had taken off from Kuala Lumpur at 11.37pm on Sunday and made the unscheduled landing in Hong Kong at 2.53am today.

Fire crews were put on standby for the arrival of the Airbus 330-300, a larger jet than the Boeing 777 which is missing - the Airbus can carry up to 440 passengers, while the Boeing has a 365 passenger capacity.

Despite the emergency landing, the airline said that electrical power continued to be supplied by an auxiliary power unit.

‘All 271 passenger from MH066 have been transferred on other carriers,’ said the airline.

A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong airport said the plane landed safely less than 30 minutes after it notified the airport. She said it was not classified as an emergency landing, although emergency services were put on standby.

The incidents in Hong Kong and Nepal occurred while an international search continued into its third week for flight MH370 which vanished on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Airline officials have been grilled following the disappearance of MH370 on whether safety checks had been carried out on that particular plane.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, right, talks with John Rice, left, senior search and rescue officer and mission coordinator for the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines aircraft

Radar specialists are pictured aboard a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean

The US Federal Aviation Administration last year issued a warning about a potential weak spot in Boeing 777s which could lead to what it said was ‘the loss of structural integrity of the aircraft’.

The administration told airlines to look out for corrosion under the fuselage skin which could lead to the fuselage being compromised.

This, it said, could lead to a possible rapid decompression as well as the plane breaking up.

Malaysian Airlines officials, under pressure to answer whether safety checks had been carried out on its 777 aircraft, insisted that everything had been done in accordance with guidance from Boeing.

The brief scare comes just a day after it was revealed that missing Flight 370 dropped to as low as 12,000ft in what could have been a cabin emergency before it disappeared from the radar

As the exhaustive search continues in the Indian Ocean for the missing Boeing 777-200, an official revealed the doomed passenger jet made a sharp turn over the South China Sea which ‘seemed to be intentional’.

The plane's last confirmed position, picked up by Malaysian military radar, was at 2.15am Malaysia time (1815 GMT March 7) about 200 nautical miles north-west of Malaysia's Penang island, roughly an hour after it diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.