Passengers were forced to evacuate a widebody Delta Air Lines plane that had just pushed back from the gate at Orlando Airport after flames and thick black smoke started spewing out of one of the engines.
Two hundred passengers were onboard the nine-year-old Airbus A330, along with 10 flight attendants and two pilots for Delta’s regularly scheduled DL1312 flight to Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport, which was meant to depart from Orlando at around 11:00 am on Monday.
Dramatic eyewitness video taken by passengers waiting in the airport terminal terminal showed the moment that smoke started to rise above the aircraft and flames shot out of the engine while the pushback tug was still attached to the plane.
Another video of the emergency evacuation captured passengers running across the tarmac towards the terminal as the airport fire service doused the engine with water.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Delta commented: “We appreciate our customers’ cooperation and apologize for the experience. Nothing is more important than safety and Delta teams will work to get our customers to their final destinations as soon as possible.”
The airline noted that flight crew followed standard operating procedures to initiate an evacuation after the flames erupted from the tailpipe of one of the engines.
As is standard practice when there is a significant hazard affecting one side of the aircraft, flight attendants only deployed the slides on the opposite side of the plane from where the flames and smoke were present.
This is, of course, one reason why aircraft must be certified to evacuate within 90 seconds through just half of the exits, although, it appears that one of the slides on the safe side of the aircraft did not deploy as designed and was unusable during the evacuation.
