Plane evacuated in smoke scare
A full-scale emergency was declared as the British Aerospace 146 was preparing to take off from Belfast City Airport on a flight to Manchester.
Airport spokesman Brian Carlin said the 54 passengers were evacuated without injury during the alert.
A British Airways spokesman said: “All the passengers were on board and, as it was pushing back from the stand, they noticed a slight haze of blue smoke in the cabin.
“The captain decided as a precautionary measure to have a full evacuation, and emergency slides were deployed and all passengers safely evacuated down the slides. No-one was hurt.”
The aircraft was moved away from the main terminal to a service area, where engineers began an examination of the aircraft to determine the cause of the smoke.
The passengers were housed in a British Airways lounge while the airline organised a replacement aircraft.
Belfast City Airport said later that one woman was injured during the evacuation of the aircraft.
She was treated at the scene by ambulance staff and joined other passengers in the British Airways lounge to await a replacement aircraft.
An airport spokesman said: “The airport’s emergency procedures were successfully implemented in full. We have no further comment to make on the incident and await further reports from the airline.”
He said the airport was operating normally with flights leaving and arriving on schedule.
