Terrifying moment passenger plane skids through mud after landing on icy runway

Even though we know flights are super safe nowadays, a bumpy landing is scary in a way that you sometimes can't suppress.

Most of us have had the experience of a plane bumping hard as it lands, or veering from side to side a bit as it battles the wind - and it really isn't much fun at all.

Spare a thought, then, for the passengers of a flight that recently landed at Vilnius Airport in Lithuania during some rotten weather and had things go way worse than normal.

A viral video shows an Airbus A320 skidding off the runway, going straight onto the large grassy (and muddy) verge.

It looks like it might become mired in mud there, although it thankfully doesn't crash or lose its landing gear at all, but manages to get back on the runway and taxi around to let its passengers and crew off.

The incident has been reposted all over X (formerly Twitter) with videos and some spectacular photos doing the rounds.

Experts suggest the plane didn't come away from the experience unscathed, which isn't a huge surprise - it might have sustained some damage to its undercarriage.

But there don't appear to have been any injuries which is lucky, since that little off-roading episode will doubtless have been pretty rocky inside the plane's cabin.

It did all result in a chunk of disruption at what isn't a huge airport, though, with operations having to close down for a couple of hours while some debris was cleared and everything was checked on the runway.

Aviation sleuths on Reddit are already all over the case working out what happened (and speculating about the amount of water on that runway being unsafe).

Still, many of them have congratulated the Airbus for its build quality, since the plane stood up to a stress test it was never designed for. As one comment put it: "Looks like the landing gears held up pretty good. Airbus ought to be happy about that."

Commenters have also pointed out that this is why every runway sign around an airport is actually on a flexible base, and why there are so many run-off areas for planes to use if needed.

It's all so that when something like this happens, the plane and its passengers have the best possible chance to make it through unscathed.