Passengers evacuated on runway at Singapore’s Changi Airport after Air China plane engine catches fire

Passengers on an Air China flight were evacuated upon landing in Singapore after one of the aircraft’s engines caught fire, leading to a three-hour closure of Changi Airport on Sunday.

Videos on social media showed passengers evacuating the aircraft using the emergency exit slide while dark smoke billowed from the engine that was still on fire. Other images taken inside the plane showed a dark cabin and the aisle blanketed in smoke.

All 146 passengers and nine crew members safely evacuated after landing at about 4:15 p.m. local time, according to a statement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

A fire in the left engine was extinguished about 10 minutes later and nine passengers sustained minor injuries related to smoke inhalation and abrasions during evacuation, it said.

Smoke was also detected in the front cargo hold and a lavatory, Changi Airport said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Air China said in a statement on Weibo that flight CA403 was traveling from China’s Chengdu Tianfu Airport to Singapore Changi Airport when smoke appeared in the cabin of the A320neo before landing.

The carrier initially determined that the fire was caused by a mechanical failure of the engine, and further investigation is currently underway.

Last March, China faced its worst air disaster in more than a decade when a Boeing 737-800 China Eastern Airlines flight carrying 132 people left no survivors when it crashed while en route from Kunming to Guangzhou.