Iranian passenger jet carrying 144 people crashes onto busy road narrowly missing cars and pedestrian

An Iranian passenger plane carrying 144 people has crash landed on a major road, narrowly missing traffic and pedestrians.

Two people were reportedly injured when the Caspian Airline McDonnell Douglas MD-83 missed the runway and belly-flopped onto the road in the southwestern Khuzestan province after apparently losing its landing gear.

Passengers were seen calmly exiting the aircraft with their carry-on luggage via two doors, footage from Iran's Civil Aviation Network News showed.

“We crashed.

"We crashed but we are unhurt,” a male passenger said in Farsi in the video.

"My hand is shaking.”

Airport director Mohammad Reza Rezanian said all 136 passengers and eight crew members had safely disembarked the plane, which had been flying to Tehran, 380 miles (610 kilometers) northeast of Mahshahr.

Passengers were seeing exiting the plane by two doors. Credit: AP

Iranian state television said the 25-year-old plane came in harder than usual and lost its landing gear as it hit the tarmac.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, a single-aisle workhorse introduced in the mid-1980s, has been largely phased out of commercial air travel in the West.

The plane was registered to Caspian Airlines in August 2012, but had previously flown for airlines in France, Canada, US, Colombia, Burkina Faso and Ukraine.

The incident comes weeks after the accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran by the Revolutionary Guard amid heightened tensions with the United States, killing all 176 people aboard.

Iran has struggled to obtain parts for its aging fleet of airliners amid sanctions by the US introduced by Donald Trump.

Before the downing of Ukraine Airlines flight PS752, Iran's last fatal crash happened in January 2019, when a decades-old Iranian Boeing 707 military cargo plane reportedly carrying meat from Kyrgyzstan crashed while trying to land west of Iran’s capital, leaving one survivor and killing 15 people.