After one of the aircraft’s engines caught fire on an Air China flight, passengers were evacuated upon landing in Singapore, leading to a three-hour closure of Changi Airport on Sunday.
Images taken inside the plane showed a dark cabin and the aisle blanketed in smoke while videos on social media showed passengers evacuating the aircraft using the emergency exit slide while dark smoke billowed from the engine that was still on fire.
According to a statement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, all 146 passengers and 9 crew members were safely evacuated after landing at about 4:15 p.m. local time.
A fire in the left engine was extinguished about 10 minutes later. Singapore authorities later said that 9 passengers on board sustained minor injuries that were related to smoke inhalation and abrasions during evacuation.
Changi Airport said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that smoke was also detected in the front cargo hold and a lavatory.
It was initially determined by the carrier that the fire was caused by a mechanical failure of the engine, and further investigation is currently underway.
Air China said in a statement on Weibo that smoke appeared in the cabin of the A320neo prior to landing when flight CA403 was travelling from China’s Chengdu Tianfu Airport to Singapore Changi Airport.
The aircraft was towed away at around 6 pm, and the runway which was one of three at Changi Airport, reopened just after 7 pm, after checks were carried out.
According to the tracking app VariFlight.com around 30 % of arrivals or departures had been hit by delays or cancellations as of 8pm Singapore Time.
China faced its worst air disaster in over a decade when a Boeing 737-800 China Eastern Airlines flight carrying 132 people left no survivors when it crashed while en route from Kunming to Guangzhou last March.
