Boeing 777 plane catches fire on Las Vegas runway

Los Angeles, Sep 9: A British Airways plane caught fire during takeoff on a runway in Las Vegas late Tuesday afternoon, said an aviation authority.

The flight 2276 heading for London’s Gatwick Airport was scheduled to take off around 4 p.m. Pacific time (2300 GMT) and its left engine caught fire at 4.13 p.m. (2313 GMT), officials of Las Vegas McCarran Airport said.

The crew immediately aborted the takeoff and evacuated all passengers off the flight by 4.18 p.m. (2318 GMT), Xinhua news agency quoted airport officials as saying. The aircraft was a 275-seat Boeing 777-200 on which there were 159 passengers and 13 crew members aboard at the time.

McCarran Airport confirmed two of the aboard people were transported for minor injuries. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the aircraft’s left engine caught fire and the crew aborted its takeoff, but the reason of fire was still unclear. According to an online video clip inside the terminal of McCarran Airport, a plume of black smoke came from the left engine and billowed into the sky, and flames could be seen clearly.

The incident spurred the airport to close one of its runways. Passengers exited using the emergency slides and took buses back to the terminal. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued ground stop for some airports, said the airport officials. And the operations of McCarran Airport have come back to normal with the exception of one runway affected by the fire.