Fire alert on Royal Brunei flight
April 16, 2012, 10:53 amYahoo! New Zealand
Passengers had to jump from their plane and spend a night without any belongings after a fire alert on a Royal Brunei flight.
Passengers had to jump from their plane and spend a night without any belongings after a fire alert on a Royal Brunei flight.
The scary ordeal happened on a flight from London to Brunei via Dubai yesterday, news.com.au reports.
The flight was diverted to Mumbai where it made an emergency landing.
Australian couple Erin and Peter Field were among the 195 people evacuated from the Boeing 777.
According to the Geelong Advertiser, the travellers had to drop a metre to a metal staircase after the aircraft touched down in Mumbai.
Frustrated passengers and crew have had a 24-hour wait in Mumbai without their passports or money as they'd been told to leave their possessions behind.
Ms Field says the handling of the incident was "shambolic".
She said on her Facebook page that the flight attendants removed their head dresses.
"I grabbed one and asked if we were landing. She said no, and that it was all fine. Then the captain comes on and says we are emergency landing in Mumbai," she wrote.
Royal Brunei Airlines has released a statement saying the emergency landing was a "precautionary" measure in response to an AFT cargo fire alert.
No passengers were injured and there was no fire on board, the airline said.
The passengers were transferred to a hotel and given an express laundry service, the airline said on Twitter.