Firefighters spray wrong plane with foam
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, December 11, 2015
Firefighters responding to reports of an engine on fire at Fuzhou Changle International Airport sprayed foam on the wrong plane.
![Fire fighters work to put out a fire at the Fuzhou Airport, in southeast China's Fujian Province on December 10, 2015. [Photo: news.qq.com]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20151211/7427ea210acc17d464d913.jpg "Fire fighters work to put out a fire at the Fuzhou Airport, in southeast China's Fujian Province on December 10, 2015. [Photo: news.qq.com]") |
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Fire fighters work to put out a fire at the Fuzhou Airport, in southeast China's Fujian Province on December 10, 2015. [Photo: news.qq.com] |
The incident caused the runway to be closed for around 90 minutes.
Sparks had been seen coming from the right-hand engine on an Air China Boeing 737 as it prepared to take off for Beijing from the airport in the capital of southeast China's Fujian Province.
According to an Air China statement, this was a "normal situation" that wouldn't affect flight safety. However, the captain of a following Fuzhou Airlines jet who spotted the sparks informed air traffic control who then called the Air China captain and firefighters, Fuzhou Airlines said in a statement.
Eight fire trucks arrived within two minutes, surrounded the Fuzhou Airlines plane and sprayed it with foam.
They quickly realized they had picked the wrong plane and moved on to deal with the Air China aircraft, but not before the Fuzhou plane was covered in foam.
The airport authority decided to close the runway to deal with the aftermath.
The Air China flight was canceled and passengers transferred to other flights.
Passengers on the Fuzhou Airlines flight to Jinan in east China's Shandong Province had to disembark to allow the foam to be removed and a subsequent safety inspection, the airline said.
The aircraft finally took off after a seven-hour delay.
According to an Air China engineer, the engines on a Boeing 737 can sometimes generate some "leftover fuel" and in some conditions this can cause a spark. But he said this wouldn't affect flight safety.
A statement from the airport authority said that firefighters found two Boeing 737-800 aircraft on the runway. The Air China aircraft had turned off its engines and showed no abnormality while some smoke was coming from an engine on the Fuzhou Airlines aircraft, according to the firefighting team's leader.
Some 24 outbound flights were delayed while six incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports.
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