– ‘A lot of panic’ –
Jacob Steinberg, a reporter for British daily The Guardian, said on his Twitter account that he was asleep on the plane when it came to a “crashing halt” on the runway.
“Initially told to stay seated, then shout of evacuate,” he said, adding that the flames had apparently melted some of the jet’s windows.
“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,” he said.
Steinberg said the pilot later joined the passengers inside the airport terminal and told them the fire was caused by a “catastrophic failure of the engine.”
“The pilot looked pretty shook up to be honest,” he said. “Has been flying for years, don’t think he had ever seen anything like that.”
Paul Berberian, a passenger aboard another plane that was on the tarmac at the time of the incident, described watching in disbelief as the British Airways plane caught fire and smoke billowed from the fuselage.
A video shot by Berberian and aired on CNN showed the stricken plane’s passengers using evacuation slides and running away on the tarmac as emergency vehicles rushed to the site to douse the flames.
“We were all glued to the side of the plane watching this unfold,” he said of fellow passengers on his flight.
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