False Alarm Causes Emergency Landing at Madinah Airport
Muhammad Abdullah, Arab News
MADINAH, 3 January 2008 — A Saudi Arabian Airlines plane bound for Casablanca in Morocco carrying 407 passengers returned to Prince Muhammad International Airport in Madinah a few minutes after take-off and made a safe emergency landing Tuesday night following a false alarm that indicated one of the plane’s enignes had caught fire.
The Boeing 747, which had been rented by Saudia from a Thai airline, had just taken off when the pilot requested permission to make an emergency landing.
The airport immediately went on a red alert and ambulances and emergency teams were readied for the emergency landing.
Some of the passengers were taken to a hospital close by, while others were treated at the airport for minor bruises. One passenger reportedly suffered a broken nose. Passengers were housed in a hotel, while arrangements were made for another aircraft to take them to the Moroccan city.
After hearing about the emergency landing, Madinah Gov. Prince Abdul Aziz ibn Majed arrived at the airport to oversee rescue operations in the event of an emergency.
A member of the crew, who asked his name not be published, told Arab News that shortly after departure the plane’s fire alarm went off indicating there was a fire in the cargo hold.
“The plane was immediately diverted back to Madinah and the airport was informed that there was a fire on the aircraft. Before landing, sensors went off indicating there was a fire inside two of the aircraft’s four engines,” he said, adding that the pilot switched off the two engines and switched on the plane’s automatic fire extinguishing system.
“The pilot relied on two engines to make the landing. When the plane landed, the plane’s system showed that there was a fire in the remaining engines as well. The pilot immediately turned off the engines and stopped the airplane at the end of the runway away from the terminal building,” he said.
After passengers were evacuated, a technical team inspected the airplane and determined that there was no fire. “It was a technical glitch in the plane’s fire sensors,” he added.
Hatim Al-Rehaily, an eyewitness, who was in a café near the airport, said that the plane was flying unusually low and there was loud noise coming from the engines.
“We knew that something was wrong because we’d never seen a plane fly so low. Only when we saw ambulances driving toward the airport that we knew that something was up,” he said, adding that security was tight at the airport and that people were being stopped from driving toward it.
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