A passenger plane caught fire at a South Korean airport Tuesday night before takeoff, but all 176 people on board were evacuated safely, officials said.
An Airbus aircraft operated by South Korean airline Air Busan was preparing to depart for Hong Kong when a fire broke out in its rear sections at Gimhae International Airport in the southeast, the Ministry of Transport said in a statement.
The plane’s 169 passengers, six crew members and an engineer were evacuated using escape slides, the ministry said.
In a statement released by the National Fire Control Authority, three people were slightly injured during the rescue. The fire control agency said that the fire was completely brought under control at 11:31 pm local time after an hour of deploying fire engines and fire fighters to the scene.
The cause of the fire was not known immediately. The Ministry of Transport said that the plane was an A321 model.
Tuesday’s incident came a month after a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed at the Muan International Airport in southern South Korea. All but two of the 181 people on board were killed in the Jeju Air plane crash. It was one of the deadliest accidents in South Korea’s aviation history.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft skidded off the airport’s runway and crashed into a concrete structure on December 29, bursting into flames after the landing gear failed to deploy. The flight had returned from Bangkok and all but two Thai nationals were South Korean.
In the first accident report released on Monday, officials confirmed that they found evidence of birds striking the plane’s engine. Officials have not yet determined the cause of the crash. Agency.