Engine fire sparks panic among passengers

PANICKED passengers scrambled and pushed to the emergency exits of an Airbus 320 preparing to carry 165 passengers from Paris to a holiday city in Spain after an engine suddenly caught fire yesterday, a passenger said.

Eight passengers had chafed skin from using the emergency exit slides and were treated by airport personnel after the incident at Orly airport, Vueling airline and French police said.

Some passengers were treated for shock.

Vueling Flight 9127, was preparing to leave for Alicante in south-eastern Spain when the fire occurred at 10:36am.

“Before getting out, everybody was panicking inside the plane.

“When people heard about the incident, everybody was pushing each other to get out and eventually everybody went down the emergency slides,” said passenger Arantza Urrejola, 38.

“There was no announcement, the crew asked us to evacuate in very quick Spanish so people started to panic a little bit,” passenger Alix Gossellin told Reuters television.

“Some climbed over the seats and then the emergency chutes came out and within five minutes we were on the tarmac, so – quite quick. It was very impressive because it was each man for himself,” she added.

Passenger Terry Volante said he saw black smoke coming from the jet engine when the plane was readying for take-off on the tarmac.

“The firefighters arrived less than two minutes later, a steward opened the doors, activated the escape slides and a flight attendant told us in Spanish to evacuate,” said Volante.

Veronique Preveaux, who was travelling with her 12-year-old son, complained about the way the crew handled the situation.

“They made us panic,” she said.

The fire broke out as the plane was disengaging from the boarding ramp, said Helen Courcoul, chief of staff at the Val de Marne prefecture.

Jose Luis Casado, a representative of the Spanish carrier Iberia, which owns nearly half of Vueling, said that a ground employee spotted liquid leaking from one of the engines as it was starting.

The employee sounded an alert, but the fire broke out soon after.

The decision was made to use the emergency slides and not wait for the boarding ramp to be put back in place to evacuate the passengers, Casado said.

“Of course, it is a very spectacular procedure because we use the emergency slides, we make the usual announcements, asking people to take off their shoes and leave their luggage on board the plane. It’s quite a traumatic experience for the passengers,” Casado said.

Firemen rushed to the scene and quickly put out the blaze.

There was no damage to airport facilities or to other nearby aircraft.

The incident follows two high-profile Airbus plane crashes on Paris flights. A Yemenia airlines Paris-Comoros flight crashed on June 30 off the coast of the Indian Ocean island nation, killing 152 people; the plane was an Airbus 310.

An Airbus 330 crashed into the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, killing all 228 people onboard the Air France flight.

Airbus said it had received a report on the latest incident and was offering the airline customer support.