Jet makes emergency landing in Australia

A British Airways 747-400 made an emergency landing at Sydney Airport today amid conflicting reports that there may have been an electrical fire in the cargo hold.

None of the 247 passengers and crew onboard the jumbo aircraft on a flight to Singapore was injured, British Airways said.

The airline said the problem was simply a faulty warning light in the cockpit but no actual fire in the cargo hold, but the airport said there was in fact a fire.

"Fire crews say there was a small electrical wiring fire in the forward cargo hold which was extinguished by the on-board extinguisher system," an airport spokesman said. "There’s about a meter-square of fire damage."

But British Airways spokesman Lucy Hays said: "I’ve been assured that there wasn’t actually a fire at all.

"It appears that a light in the cockpit was illuminated due to a fault in the wiring to the fridge in the galley," the airline said in a statement. "The aircraft is now being looked at by our engineers."

Flight BA 16 had just taken off from Sydney around 4 pm. local time (7am Irish time) for Singapore when the pilot reported mechanical trouble, police said.

The call prompted a full-scale emergency response, with some 25 ambulances sent to the airport.

"The airport got a call from the plane indicating that they had some problems and the airport emergency plan was activated," an Australian police spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

British Airways said in a statement that the aircraft landed safely at 4:24pm (7.24am Irish time) and passengers "disembarked normally".