FIRE ON KOREAN AIR BOEING 777’S LEFT ENGINE ABORTED TAKEOFF AT HANEDA TOKYO
From various sources,
May 27, TOKYO
KE2708’s left engine shows the sign of fire and burn. May 27, 2016 at Haneda, Tokyo. PHOTO N. Takuchi, Mainichi Shimbun.
At around 12:30 pm JST today, Korean Air KE2708 bound for Gimpo International Airport, South Korea, was about to take off at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport with 319 passengers and crew. The Boeing 777-300 broke fire from its portside engine.
- The aircraft made an emergency stop on the runway.
- All of passengers and crew were able to evacuate by shooters but a total of 19 passengers had minor injury in their evacuation.
- Japan’s Transport Safety Board made a preliminary investigation and found that the Korean aircraft’s left engine caught fire after running around 1,000 meters from a full stop. The investigators found the engine was severely damaged and internal parts got out by breaking through the casing to many parts of the runway. Experts thought some cause made a fuel leakage and got fire later.
- According to sources at the Ministry of Land and Transportation and Korean Air, Haneda tower informed the aircraft that ‘Found fire at the left engine’ and the crew aborted takeoff. The crew confirmed anomaly at cockpit instruments. The aircraft flew to Tokyo earlier on that day and there was no error found in the previous flight as well as pre-departure check up.
- The aircraft has been flying since 1999 and the burned engine was exchanged a year and half ago.
- Tokyo Metropolitan Police found no suspicious articles and found no clue to terrorism. When this Korean Air got this incident, US President Barak Obama was in the western part of Japan by attending G7 Summit in Mie Prefecture.
- At Haneda, the runway was closed for about six hours while the other three runways stopped operations for about two hours. According to Japan Airlines and ANA, the two major Japanese carriers, a total of 406 flights were cancelled affecting over 70,000 people by the Korean Air incident.
