About fifty passengers had to be evacuated urgently to the Tarmac of Vancouver Airport, British Columbia, after a fire fire triggered aboard a plane from the Canadian company Westjet on Saturday evening.
“As a precaution, the crew chose to use the slides to quickly evacuate the remaining fifty passengers on board,” Westjet spokesperson Julia Kaiser said on Sunday, according to the Vancouver Sun.
On Saturday evening around 11pm, a “small exhaust pipe fire” would have triggered in one of the engines after the aircraft stop, which had just landed from his trip from Tampa to Florida, continued the spokesperson.
The plane was already parked at the boarding gate and around fifty passengers were still on board when the fire was triggered, forcing their urgent evacuation via the aircraft slides.
“No injuries were reported and the plane was withdrawn from the maintenance service,” said the spokesperson, according to CTV News.
Vancouver’s fire services were called to the scene, but the fire had already been extinguished thanks to the “internal systems of the aircraft” which would have been sufficient to take care of the “small fire”, reiterated the spokesman for the English-speaking media.
The incident would also have had no impact on the operations of the airport, which would have continued as planned, said in turn the spokesperson for Vancouver International Airport, Chloe Reynaud, in writing, according to the Vancouver Sun.
A team of investigators from the Transport Security Office was deployed for “[recueillir] information and [évaluer] The incident, ”said the federal agency by press release, according to CTV News.