Plane passenger praised for spotting house fire

Firefighters today praised an eagle-eyed plane passenger who spotted a house fire from the air as his flight made its final approach to Manchester Airport.

West Yorkshire Fire Service said its Todmorden station was alerted after an unknown plane passenger told the pilot what he had seen.

A spokesman for the service said the pilot radioed to the control tower and the airport notified Greater Manchester Fire Service – who then called their colleagues over The Pennines after somebody worked out the aircraft would have been over the Halifax area at the time of the pilot’s message.

Firefighters eventually managed to locate the blaze at 4.30am yesterday.

It is understood the couple living in the property were asleep upstairs and were unaware of the fire until the firefighters turned up.

The fire service spokesman said: “It was an amazing chain of calls which led our crews to turn up the blaze.

“The lads eventually found it and were able to deal with it but it could have been much more serious.

“It’s pretty amazing someone spotted it from up there. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”