Russian tourists were shocked when they took off from Phuket: the smoke from under the wing of the Azur Air plane scared everyone in the cabin, and sitting at the airport for many hours brought a lot of suffering, both psychological and physical, due to the lack of arrangement of such a forced pastime. There were 309 passengers and 12 crew members on board this ill-fated flight at the time of the incident.
The details of this incident are as follows: this weekend, Russian tourists got into a shocking situation when trying to take off from Phuket – the Azur Air liner, on which the tourists were supposed to fly to Moscow, remained “on the ground” due to technical problems. According to the Thai publication Phuket News, it was about an engine fire, the tourists themselves talk about “smoke from under the wing of the plane”, as well as about a tire that burst.
“An engine fire on a flight to Moscow caused a Boeing 767-300ER to abort takeoff, and passengers and crew were evacuated from the plane at Phuket International Airport,” the Thai media initially reported. It also noted that the plane, which was unable to take off, brought the entire airport to a standstill for nearly an hour and caused nearly ten flights to Phuket to be diverted to other airports.
Shocked tourists – and there were more than three hundred of them on board – said they “heard loud bangs and explosions”. The pilots, according to Phuket News, eventually explained that one of the engines had caught fire. The commander quickly activated the fire extinguishing system, which shut off the fuel supply to the engine. However, the plane had already gained speed, which is why the pilot had to brake sharply. Due to this, in turn, “smoke began to rise from under the wheels of the liner, as the brakes were heating up, some tires were damaged as a result,” – the publication declares. At the same time, the pilots still managed to stop the airliner, although in the end it was not able to steer back to the taxiway on its own. Meanwhile, local fire brigades arrived at the “distress signal” to help the malfunctioning plane.
Tourists were frightened – and not only by the delay. According to them, they are afraid that such a situation indicates the bad condition of the liners. At least, the mass media of some countries have already “presented” this situation as evidence of the effectiveness of air sanctions against the air fleet of Russian airlines, which mainly consists of Western equipment.
Azur Air itself did not comment on this incident either on its official website or on its official Telegram channel as of Sunday evening.