Plane at US airport evacuated minutes before take-off after ‘landing gear incident’ sparks fire

More than 170 passengers on an American Airlines flight from Denver to Miami were evacuated onto the runway on July 26 due to a brake fire just ahead of the plane taking off.

One person was taken to hospital for minor injuries.

The plane was still on the runway and was about to take off when one of its tyres experienced a “maintenance issue”, according to American Airlines and Denver International Airport.

Passengers said there was panic inside the plane, as they heard a loud bang and saw flames before they were instructed to evacuate.

“The plane started vibrating and shaking really bad,” Shay Armistead, 17, who was headed to Santiago, Chile, for a ski trip with her team, told CNN.

“We started tilting to the left side of the runway, and then we heard the sound of the wind from them lifting the brakes of the plane and slamming on them really hard,” she recalled.

Just a few seats down, Shay’s teammate, 16-year-old Margaret Gustafson, had a clear view out of the window, and she saw flames coming out from under the plane.

“That’s when I started fully panicking,” she said.

Shay said: “One passenger was screaming ‘we’re all going to die’. Another passenger was not sitting down and cooperating, and so it was kind of just a lot of panic.”

The Denver Fire Department said the combination of blown tyres and the plane’s deceleration during braking resulted in a fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the crew onboard the plane “reported a possible landing gear incident during departure”. It said it was investigating the incident.

Videos posted online show passengers on board a Boeing 737 Max 8 sliding down an inflatable slide near the cockpit as heavy, dark smoke drifts from underneath the plane and flames engulf a set of tyres.

A few passengers are seen stumbling at the foot of the slide, and many are seen carrying their belongings.

A man carrying a small child also slips on the tarmac as he slides out. The child can be heard crying, as the man asks the child: “Are you okay?”

Other passengers are seen evacuating via a slide at the rear of the plane.

Mr Mark Tsurkis, who lives in Miami and Colorado Springs, told CBS News that he and the other passengers “were lucky that we didn’t get up in the air yet, so we weren’t airborne yet”.

The evacuation marked yet another troubling episode at Denver International Airport, the world’s sixth-busiest aviation hub, where a series of recent incidents has raised concern about passenger safety.

In March, dozens of passengers were forced to stand on the wing of an American Airlines plane as they evacuated the aircraft after one of its engines caught fire.

Just weeks later, a United Airlines jet struck an animal during take-off, triggering a burst of flames.