A passenger plane caught fire before takeoff at a South Korean airport on Tuesday night, but all 176 people on board were safely evacuated, officials said.
An Airbus plane operated by South Korean airline Air Busan caught fire in the rear of its aircraft at Gimhae International Airport in the southeast as it was preparing to depart for Hong Kong, the Ministry of Transport said in a statement. The ministry said 169 passengers, six crew members, and one engineer were evacuated using escape slides.
The National Fire Service said in a statement that three people were slightly injured during the rescue operation. The fire was fully under control at 11:31 pm local time, an hour after the fire department deployed fire engines and firefighters to the scene. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. The Ministry of Transport said the aircraft was an A321 model.
Tuesday’s incident comes a month after a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea, killing all but two of the 181 people on board. It was one of the deadliest accidents in South Korean aviation history.
The Boeing 737-800 skidded off the airport runway on December 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, crashing into a concrete structure and bursting into flames. The flight was returning from Bangkok, and all of the victims, except for two Thai nationals, were South Koreans.
In a first report into the crash, released on Monday, authorities confirmed they found evidence of bird strikes on the plane’s engines. However, authorities have not yet determined the cause of the crash.
