Panicking airline passengers struggled for emergency exits after an engine caught fire on the ground yesterday.
The cut-price Vueling flight was preparing to leave Orly airport in Paris for Alicante when the fire broke out.
“Before getting out, everybody was panicking inside the plane. When people heard about the incident, everybody was pushing each other to get out and eventually everybody went down the emergency slides,” passenger Arantza Urrejola (38) said.
The engine caught fire as the aircraft was disengaging from the boarding ramp.
Eight passengers suffered friction burns from using the emergency exit slides and were treated by airport personnel. Others were treated for shock.
A spokesman for the Spanish carrier Iberia, which owns almost half of Vueling, said that a ground employee had spotted liquid leaking from one of the engines as it was starting. The employee sounded an alert, but the fire broke out soon after.
The decision was made to use the emergency slides and not wait for the boarding bridge to be put back in place to evacuate the passengers, he said.
“Of course, it is a very spectacular procedure because we use the emergency slides, we make the usual announcements, asking people to take off their shoes and leave their luggage on board the plane. It’s quite a traumatic experience for the passengers,” he said.
Firemen quickly put out the blaze. There was no damage to airport facilities or to other nearby aircraft.