Jet engine ignites before takeoff
1 person seriously hurt in incident at airport in Florida
DANIA BEACH, Fla. — A jet plane’s engine caught fire on Thursday as it prepared for takeoff, and more than 100 passengers had to quickly evacuate using emergency slides. One person was seriously injured, officials said.
Dozens of passengers could be seen in video footage gliding down the slides of the Dynamic Airways flight bound for Caracas, Venezuela. Some ran away from the plane into the terminal at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport as fire crews rushed to put out the blaze.
Andres Gallegos said he was one of the first passengers to evacuate.
“I heard a loud bang. I turned around, saw the lights, saw the flames and I ran to the front of the aircraft,” said Gallegos, who said it took about 30 seconds for the plane doors to open.
Other passengers reported chaos as people screamed, cried and ran through the plane. Several people said the flight crew remained calm and acted quickly.
One person sustained serious injuries that were not lifethreatening, and about a dozen people were taken to a hospital for minor injuries including bumps, sprains and stress, said Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles.
Once inside the airport, passengers expressed frustration, saying they’d been held in a room for more than an hour and had not heard from the airline.
Don Dodson, the director of operations for Dynamic Airways, said the airline had set up a crisis center, flown in additional airline representatives to help passengers and arranged for a relief flight to take passengers to their final destinations.
Dynamic is a 5-year-old airline that connects Fort Lauderdale, New York, Venezuela and Guyana. It operates seven 767s. Officials said 110 passengers and crew were onboard this flight.
Passengers on another plane on the runway recorded the fire and posted video to Twitter.
An air-traffic controller told the pilot “a lot of fluid” was leaking from his left engine and then urgently said the engine had caught fire and that he was dispatching firefighters, according to an audio recording.
Airline officials said the onboard fire-extinguishing fluid was not enough to put out the fire.
The airport closed briefly after the fire. The south runway reopened Thursday afternoon.
Dynamic began servicing Caracas in July, after several other major airlines ended or slashed service to Venezuela over the government’s refusal to pay an estimated $4 billion the carriers say they have trapped in the country.
For Venezuelans hoping to travel abroad, the options have been severely reduced to littleknown carriers such as Dynamic or domestic carriers, which due to the country’s economic crisis, have struggled to import replacement parts.
Airline officials said they’ve already started reviewing records for the crew and the plane, which was last inspected in June and had a new engine with less than 200 hours of flight time. Nine crew members were onboard.
“Something malfunctioned. We’re not aware of what happened,” Dodson said.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a four-person team to Fort Lauderdale to investigate.