A British Airways plane bound for London has caught fire at Las Vegas airport, forcing the evacuation of 172 people on board on emergency slides.
A British Airways passenger jet is shown after a fire at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas September 8, 2015. REUTERS/STEVE MARCUS
All 172 passengers and crew escaped a fire on a British Airways (BA) plane in Las Vegas on Tuesday when smoke and flames engulfed the aircraft as it was about to take off for London.
The fire in one of the plane's two engines sent black smoke into the cabin, forcing the passengers to rush to the front, sparking scenes of panic, one person on board tweeted.
Several passengers and crew suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital after all on board the Boeing Co (BA.N) 777 escaped down emergency inflatable slides.
The Federal Aviation Administration's Pacific Division said the plane's left engine had burst into flames on take-off. BA (ICAG.L) said the engines were made by General Electric (GE) (GE.N). A GE spokesman in Europe declined to comment.
Passengers were evacuated from the twin-engine, wide-body jet to the runway using emergency slides, officials said.
He said the plane was carrying 159 passengers and a crew of 13.
McCarran airport said on its Twitter feed that the blaze was extinguished and all passengers had been removed from the plane by 4.18pm (2318 GMT), five minutes after the Clark County Fire Department and airport emergency crews received their first call of trouble.
A British Airways plane can be seen in flame at LAS airport Las Vegas Photo: Twitter @banjo
McCarran said its flight operations would continue on its three other runways, though the FAA ordered all inbound air traffic from several other airports held at their points of origin, including San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
It was not immediately clear whether the two people McCarran said were taken to local hospitals were passengers or crew members.
Jacob Steinberg, a sports journalist at the Guardian newspaper, wrote on Twitter that he had fallen asleep on the plane during takeoff and felt the jetliner come to “crashing halt.”
“Could smell and see smoke but was on other side of plane. One person said fire melted a couple of windows,” Mr Steinberg wrote.
“They opened the back door and slide went down and smoke started coming in plane, followed by mad dash to front. A lot of panic.”
"Our crew evacuated the aircraft safely and the fire was quickly extinguished by the emergency services at the airport," a BA spokeswoman said.
A photograph posted by the airport of the immediate aftermath showed the plane on the runway with charred fuselage. The incident temporarily delayed flights across the western United States.
Jacob Steinberg, a sports journalist for Britain's Guardian newspaper, tweeted that he had fallen asleep on the plane during take-off and felt the jetliner come to "crashing halt".
.A spokeswoman for British Airways, which is owned by IAG, said safety is always the airline’s priority and the airline is looking after customers and providing passengers with hotel accommodation and other needs. - Reuters.
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