News from Las Vegas International Airport this evening with a British Airways flight BA2276 suffered a major incident as it prepared to depart.
It appears the left hand engine on the Boeing 777-200ER fitted with GE90 engines suffered a failure, causing a fire.
The take off was aborted, and all passengers aboard – 159 passengers and 18 crew were evacuated via the emergency slides.
Seven people have been taken to hospital for minor injuries according to Las Vegas Airport.
Just evacuated on a British Airways flight at Las Vegas airport after an engine caught fire. Don’t think anyone hurt pic.twitter.com/Y986xW9Wzy
— Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) September 8, 2015
BA2776 was due to operate Las Vegas McCarran Airport to London Gatwick Airport using plane registration G-VIIO. The fire on the plane was reported as out by Airport authorities at 16:59 local time:
UPDATE 4:59 PM Scene @LASairport following incident involving British Airways aircraft. Clear indication fire is out. pic.twitter.com/XdjVMgtz9b
— McCarran Airport (@LASairport) September 9, 2015
However, it seems some people were more interested in rescuing their luggage rather than evacuating – and thus creating more risks during the evacuation.
To give you an idea of what the fire was like (that’s my mate Jez, who just had a knee reconstruction, on the run). pic.twitter.com/snpHGFyxIC — Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) September 8, 2015
Operationally, one runway is shut down at Las Vegas Airport, with any ground stops now lifted.
Congratulations to the captain for stopping the plane, the crew for evacuating the plane safely and the airport authorities for putting out the fire so quickly.
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