American Airlines jet catches fire on
takeoff at Chicago airport
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[October 29, 2016]
By Timothy Mclaughlin
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The engine of an
American Airlines Group Inc jet caught fire seconds from takeoff at
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Friday, prompting the crew to
abort its departure and evacuate passengers via emergency chutes,
authorities said.
No serious injuries were reported in the incident, which occurred hours
before an unrelated mishap in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the
landing gear of a FedEx Corp cargo plane collapsed on touchdown,
sparking a fire that was quickly extinguished.
The company later said the FedEx pilots were safe.
American Airlines Flight 383, a Boeing Co 767 bound for Miami with 161
passengers and a crew of nine, was headed down an O'Hare runway at about
2:30 p.m. CDT (1930 GMT) when the right-side engine of the twin-engine
jet burst into flames, authorities said.
Footage from Chicago's ABC News affiliate station, WLS-TV, showed the
idled plane on the ground with flames and large clouds of black smoke
billowing from its right side and emergency slides deployed on the left
side. Passengers milled about watching the blaze as fire trucks pumped
water on the flames.
Timothy Sampey, assistant deputy fire commissioner, said the mishap
could have been much worse.
The plane was fully loaded with 43,000 lbs (19,504 kg) of jet fuel,
which was leaking when fire crews reached the jet, Sampey told a news
conference later.
"So they had a heavy volume of fire on both the engine and the entire
wing," he said. "This could have been absolutely devastating if it
happened later."
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Sampey confirmed the incident began with a fire in the right-side
engine.
The plane's CF6 engine, the "workhorse" of the commercial aviation
industry, was built by General Electric Co, and GE dispatched
investigators to the scene, the company said.
The Federal Aviation Administration initially said the pilot aborted
takeoff after reporting a blown-out tire. But city fire spokesman Larry
Langford said he saw no blown tires at the scene.
Langford said 19 passengers and one flight attendant were taken to a
hospital with minor injuries - such as bumps, bruises and sprained
ankles - suffered in exiting the plane. There were no burns or cases of
smoke inhalation.
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![](../images/102916pics/news_a3.jpg)
Smoke rises after an American Airlines jet (background) blew a tire,
sparking a fire and prompting the pilot to abort takeoff before
passengers were evacuated from the plane via emergency chute, at
O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois,
U.S., in this still image taken from video October 28, 2016.
Courtesy of Robocast.com/Handout via REUTERS.
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
"The fire never got into the cabin," he said. "This happened so close to
one of the airport fire stations that they were on it in a minute." He
said the plane was 15 to 20 seconds away from being airborne when the
fire erupted.
Inside the aircraft after it came to a stop, frantic passengers shouted
at each other to hurry while making their way down the aisle to an
emergency exit slide, as seen in a video posted on Facebook by passenger
Hector Gustavo Cardenas.
The incident forced the closure of at least three of the airport's eight
runways, the city Aviation Department said.
By about two hours after the incident, the airport had experienced 130
delays of departing flights and 170 inbound flights, according to
flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.
The Fort Lauderdale airport said 29 flights were diverted due to the
FedEx plane incident, but the facility was later reopened to air
traffic.
As the Chicago mishap unfolded, O'Hare's tower controllers began
ordering inbound planes to abort landing approaches and “go around,”
initially closing all runways so emergency vehicles could reach the
stricken aircraft, according to audio recordings of the main tower
frequency posted by the website liveatc.net.
Operations later resumed on the north side of O'Hare airport, one of the
world’s busiest, according to web tracking sites and a live feed of
tower conversations from liveatc.net.
(Reporting by Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago; Additional reporting by
Rory Carroll in San Francisco; Jeffrey Dastin in New York and Tim Hepher
in Hong Kong; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los
Angeles; Editing by Tom Brown and Lisa Shumaker)
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