Having reached the airstrip a few minutes before us, one of the other operators' Caravans ended up in the ditch beside the runway.
The brakes failed on touchdown and the pilot (a friend and a skilled, experienced professional) rolled as far down the 600m runway as possible, slowing down before drifting his aircraft left into the ditch.
On Papua's airstrips this is a very normal SOP Standard Operating Procedure ....putting an aircraft into a ditch or against a tree is preferable to falling off the edge of the airstrip - which, on this runway, means a 30 ft 10 m drop into the village.
The opposite runway at this airstrip has a 300 ft 100 m drop into a raging river. Another nearby airstrip has a 700 ft 210 m drop straight into the valley.
Even in the lowlands sticking a problem aircraft against a tree is preferable to floating in a river wondering about crocodiles.
Fortunately no injuries to the crew and no spillage of the cargo - 1500 litres of gasoline.
For the local population this was a thrilling spectacle and, within minutes, young and old came running from all sides to get a closer look, take some selfies [and possibly liberate any cargo which may be laying around].
Only 3 minutes behind, we were lining up to land on the same runway, unaware of the crash.
Seeing more than the usual number of people on the runway I asked the radio operator if there was a problem ....the reply was "runway clear" (no great surprise as I knew the operator could not actually see most of the airstrip).
20 seconds later, with 600+ people on the runway it became "there is a crash ...runway not clear".
No big problem as I had already started the Missed Approach 3/4 NM 1400 m from the airstrip.
By European standards this would not be worth mentioning.
However, in Papua in an aircraft at Maximum Landing Weight, going slow and fully configured for a short field landing, at 10000 ft 3000m density altitude with windshear added for fun ....it becomes a challenge.
Our Caravan performed as advertised, initially levelling off and then gave us a beautiful 100 feet per minute climb ....which is very shallow but at least we were going away from the ground.
Passing at full power 100 ft over the airstrip gave the added bonus of scattering a few hundred plane spotters.
The Missed Approach leads into a nice valley to accelerate and climb, returning to land after 10 minutes once the security forces had cleared the runway.
In Europe a runway with an aircraft laying on the edge would have closed the airport for days if not weeks. That day in Papua normal operations resumed within 10 minutes.