Plane catches fire at Busan airport; 3 injured

FILE: Former Air Busan Boeing 737-400 at Seoul Gimpo International Airport. (File Photo By aeroprints.com/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Yonhap, Philippine News Agency

BUSAN – A passenger aircraft caught fire at an international airport in the southeastern city of Busan on Tuesday, with three people sustaining minor injuries while evacuating.

Fire authorities said an Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321-200, bound for Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in Busan, some 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, caught fire at its tail before its takeoff around 10:26 p.m. Tuesday.

They added that all 169 passengers, six crew members and one maintenance worker aboard evacuated on an inflatable slide.

Firefighters arrived on the scene at 10:34 p.m. Just before midnight, fire authorities said they had completely extinguished the fire by 11:31 p.m.

Though there were no injuries to report at first, fire authorities later said three people sustained minor injuries during their evacuation.

Among the passengers, 22 were known to be foreigners.

“There was a crackling sound from a luggage rack at the back of the plane and then, smoke emerged,” a passenger told Yonhap News Agency. “The smoke grew thicker and flames dropped from the rack as a flight attendant was bringing a fire extinguisher there.”

While the fire started at the tail of the plane, it appeared to have spread to the fuselage of the craft.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known. A fire official said the fire apparently started inside the tail end of the plane.

Soon after the fire, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport set up a team to look into what happened. It plans to send seven officials to the scene to investigate the cause of the fire.

According to the ministry’s aviation technical information system, the ill-fated Air Busan plane had been in service for over 17 years — shorter than the 20-year mark beyond which a plane is required to come under tighter scrutiny by the ministry.

Air Busan had not reported any accident over the past dozen years.