They still say that flying remains one of the more safer ways to travel, but despite how much technology has passed through in terms of safety, the BA fire incident in Las Vegas is a scary one.
Reports confirmed that the planes left engine caught fire during takeoff preparations, forcing the 170 passengers on board to evacuate on to the runway. Officials have confirmed that 14 people were taken to hospital with minor injuries following the incident.
It could, of course, have been so much worse. If the plan caught fire during flight we could have been looking at a major fatal incident. The plane was said to be at around 89mph during takeoff when the quick decision was made to abort when the fire was spotted. Seconds later and the plan could have been forced to have taken off in the absence of runway space to stop.
Investigations in to how the fire occurred are underway but it is clearly a lucky escape. The 14 passengers taken to hospital were reportedly injured during the evacuation process and not by the spread of the fire, and no one is said to have been seriously hurt. But I think we can all agree that this is one major lucky escape. Minutes or even seconds later and the plane could have been in the air, and we could have been reporting a whole different story.
British Airways and their legal responsibility
BA of course have a responsibility to maintain the safety of passengers, and when they fail to do this, they can be held accountable. We represent a lot of people for air travel compensation claims and we know the dangers people can be subjected to, but this is a rare and frightening scenario.
All we know so far is that this has been described as a “technical issue” and is being investigated by The National Transportation Safety Board in the US. I think its safe to say that we are all hoping for an answer to how this potentially catastrophic incident took place and we hope that it can be stopped from happening again.
