Passengers onboard a Saudia Airlines Airbus A330 were evacuated from the airplane via emergency slides on Thursday morning after smoke and flames were seen coming from the main landing gear shortly after landing.
The incident occurred at around 10:25 am, shortly after the seven-year-old aircraft had landed in Peshawar, Pakistan, following a three-and-a-half-hour flight from the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The government-owned airline said that all 276 passengers and 21 crew members safely evacuated the aircraft as the airport’s fire department rushed to the runway where the aircraft had stopped.
The cause of the fire has not yet been established, although it’s likely to have been caused by the brakes overheating.
In a statement, the airline said that all passengers and crew evacuated without injury, although video taken by bystanders showed chaotic scenes at the bottom of the evacuation slides, with passengers hanging around beside the aircraft, many of whom had their carry-on luggage with them.
The incident caused the temporary closure of Peshawar Airport and Saudi says its maintenance teams are on site inspecting the aircraft.
Nearly 44 years ago, Saudia suffered one of the worst aviation disasters in modern history when all 301 passengers and crew died after their Lockheed L-1011 Tristar caught fire shortly after takeoff from Riyadh en route to Jeddah.
The exact reason why everyone onboard Saudia Flight 163 perished has never been fully established, but a leading theory is that the crew succumbed to toxic smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning before they could start an evacuation.
The cause of that fire has also never been fully established, but it’s believed that butane gas tanks being carried in the cargo hold caught fire, starting a raging inferno that soon broke through the cabin floor.
Cockpit voice recorder evidence highlighted how the flight attendants valiantly tried to suppress the flames with fire extinguishers but their efforts were to no avail.
The inexperienced Captain and First Officer appear to have initially delayed diverting the aircraft back to Riyadh and when it eventually landed, the aircraft rolled down the runway for two minutes and forty seconds as fire trucks chased down the plane.
When the aircraft eventually came to a stop, the fire trucks couldn’t get close because the engines had been left running. By this point, the fire had started to burn through the roof of the plane and only at the request of the fire services did the pilots power down the engines.
After this, however, there was no further communication from the cockpit and none of the emergency doors were ever opened. The fire engulfed the plane and gutted the fuselage.
Accident investigators believe that lives could have been saved if the plane had been brought to an immediate stop on the runway and an evacuation immediately ordered.
