Dubai plane crash landing: Firefighter dies battling Emirates aircraft flames

Blaze: The plane caught fire
Mark Chandler3 August 2016

A firefighter has died while tackling a blaze on an Emirates passenger jet which crash landed in Dubai.

The chairman of Emirates announced the man’s death to reporters this afternoon following the dramatic emergency landing.

Emirates chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said authorities were still investigating the incident, in which 14 other people were admitted to hospitals with mainly minor or moderate injuries.

Around 300 passengers and crew escaped the plans before it was engulfed in flames at Dubai International Airport.

Sheikh Ahmed said the crash-landing was not caused by any security breach.

He said the plane, which had entered service in 2003, had undergone maintenance in 2015 and that the United Arab Emirates pilot had over 7,000 hours of flying experience.

Video showed a tower of flame bursting from the front of the Boeing 777-300 jetliner, and then a thick black plume of smoke rising into the sky. Reuters was unable to verify the footage independently.

A spokesperson for operator Dubai Airports said everyone aboard flight EK521 coming from Thiruvananthapuram had been evacuated and emergency services were managing the situation.

Passenger Sharon Maryam Sharji said: "It was actually really terrifying. As we were landing there was smoke coming out in the cabin."

"People were screaming and we had a very hard landing.

“We left by going down the emergency slides and as we were leaving on the runway we could see the whole plane catch fire. It was horrifying."

All arrivals and departures at Dubai International were suspended following the incident and were due to resume at 6.30pm local time.

Boeing said it was monitoring the situation in Dubai and it would be working with Emirates to gather more information.

Safety experts said it was too early to pinpoint any cause for the crash. Investigators will scour the wreckage and interview pilots, controllers and witnesses for clues to any technical malfunctions.

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