All Are Safe After Chinese Plane Explodes
A China Airlines plane with 157 passengers on board caught fire after its right engine burst into flames and spread to its left engine at Naha airport in Okinawa, Japan, a popular beach resort. The passengers and crew were evacuated safely, the Taipei-based airline said.
The engines of the Boeing Co. 737–800 caught fire at about 10:35 a.m. after the plane had landed and while it was taxiing to the gate, Johnson Sun, a spokesman for Taipei-based China Airlines said. Terrorism was ruled out as a cause, he said.
The fire heightens safety concerns at Taiwan's national airline, which has had four fatal accidents in the past 14 years. Taiwan air safety officials have been dispatched to Okinawa to investigate the cause, which wasn't immediately clear.
Passengers and crew were evacuated through emergency chutes and could be seen on amateur video broadcast on Taiwan's TVBS television station running across the tarmac away from the aircraft as flames and smoke billowed from the broken fuselage. The nose of the aircraft was seen resting on its side with a gaping hole in its roof. Firefighters extinguished the blaze by 11:37 a.m. by spraying foam on the aircraft.
Two airport engineers on the tarmac spotted fuel leaking and alerted the captain, Akihiko Tamura, the director of Japan's Civil Aviation bureau, told journalists in Tokyo, adding that the airplane's crew evacuated the plane within 90 seconds.
No problems were reported between takeoff and landing, Mr. Sun said. Naha airport was temporarily shut after the fire and reopened at 11:03 a.m.
