Two passenger airplanes were forced to make emergency landings Tuesday due to a fire that broke out aboard one plane and a medical emergency that occurred on another, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
A 233-pasenger United Airlines flight was on its way to Brussels from New Jersey when a small fire broke out towards the back of the plane.
"We saw crew going into the back of the plane and then they asked us to turn on the ventilation to maximum, so there was a maximum of air circulation," Joris Moens, a passenger on the plane, told CBC. "So that's when we knew something was going on."
No one on Flight 999 was injured while the fire was contained before it landed at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia, Canada, late Tuesday. Moens said all of the passengers remained calm the entire time.
"There was a small fire on board. It was contained but there was smoke in the aircraft. The pilot did declare an emergency and landed at approximately 10 to 10 p.m. Atlantic time," Peter Spurway, Halifax airport vice president of communications, told CBC.
Less than three minutes after the Boeing 777 landed, another flight was diverted to the same airport due to a medical emergency.
Air Canada Flight 874 was met by emergency responders as it landed on the tarmac, an airline spokesman told the station. The 165-passenger Boeing 767 had taken off from Montreal and was headed for Frankfurt when the incident occurred, the nature of which was not immediately clear.
Spurway said both incidents were safely resolved. United Airlines passengers were accommodated with another aircraft that took off Wednesday morning. The second flight arrived in Frankfurt two hours behind schedule, CBC reported.
