Italy's flagship air carrier Alitalia suspended its flights operated by Romanian airline Carpatair after 16 people were injured at Rome's international Fiumicino airport on Saturday night when a turboprop plane went off the runway during landing in strong winds.

"Alitalia immediately launched an investigation and at the same time suspended all flights operated by Carpatair on behalf of it from Pisa and Bologna to Rome," the airline company said in a statement.

On Saturday night, an ATR 72 aircraft operated by Carpatair from the Tuscan city of Pisa failed its attempt to land, rolled off and tilted to the right wing with 46 passengers and four crew members onboard.

According to Corriere della Sera national newspaper, the airport was hit by strong winds late on Saturday, with only one runway operational, but the precise cause of the accident was unclear.

Two of the injured, including one 30-year-old Romanian hostess, were reportedly in serious conditions though not in danger of life.

Italy's flight safety agency ANSV has dispatched an investigator to start a probe into the accident, which was the latest of a series of failures occurred to Carpatair aircraft over the past months.

"We are impressed by the number of failures and problems of this company," an official of UIL, one of Italy's major trade unions, Marco Veneziani, was quoted as saying by ANSA news agency. He said the union had told air safety officials in January about concerns on Carpatair's safety standards.

Carpatair, the largest regional airline in Eastern Europe based near Timisoara, was operating on behalf of Alitalia, which was rescued from bankruptcy in 2008 by a consortium of 21 shareholders of which the largest is Air France.

Fiumicino's runway number 3 remained closed to traffic on Sunday where the main part of the aircraft was still lying on the grass and the right gear was gutted with the blades of its right propeller seriously damaged.

Passengers said that the plane touched the ground twice before it came to a stop. "We felt two strong shocks and thought that we could die," one of them was quoted as saying by local media. Endi

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