New video released by the Port of Seattle shows a fire breaking out in the nose of a parked Delta Air Lines plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, forcing passengers and crew to escape using emergency slides.
Delta Air Lines flight 604 arrived from Cancun, Mexico, and safely landed at around 9:30 p.m. local time Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The problems aboard the aircraft started when it was hooked up to the airport’s electrical network.
After being plugged in, sparks started to fly, igniting the fire in the nose of the plane, an Airbus A321. There was a short in the cord that was later repaired, a spokesperson for the airport told KOMO-TV.
There were 189 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants still on board when the fire started. They had to exit using slides.
“I think people responded to that with panic, there was a little bit of jostling in the aisles to get to the exit. But overall it was a pretty smooth evacuation process. It was like just jump out, jump onto the slides, and within a couple minutes everyone was out,” passenger Ashwin Menon told KOMO-TV.
Mr. Menon said the fire was extinguished within a minute of his evacuation. Airport officials credited the crew with ensuring the evacuation went smoothly.
“Kudos to the airline crew who reacted as trained with an abundance of caution,” airport spokesperson Perry Cooper told The New York Post.
Passengers then made it to the terminal and customs using a stairway, a Delta spokesperson said, according to the Post.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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