Twenty passengers had to be hospitalized after an American Airlines plane burst into flames on the runway at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Friday afternoon.
The horrifying scene was captured by one passenger who filmed the chaos inside the plane as everyone tried to get out of the burning aircraft.
American Airlines Flight 383 was departing for Miami and just seconds away from takeoff when there was a sudden explosion on the Boeing 767 plane.
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ the passengers yelled as they tried to rush each other out of the plane, some of them hysterically screaming as others first tried to grab their bags.
The pilot aborted takeoff around 2.35pm and 161 passengers, nine crew members and a dog were forced to evacuate on the runway.
Hector Cardenas captured the terror of his fellow passengers, who were begging each other to leave the plane faster after it caught on fire.
‘Please let us out too,’ someone can be heard saying in the video as the passengers line up to go down the escape chute slides.
‘F*****g go,’ one man screams as another woman simply wails ‘Please’ as she tries to get to the exit faster.
Cardenas then goes down the slide and lets out a scream as the passengers begin falling on top of each other before reaching the tarmac.
‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ Cardenas can be heard saying from behind the camera as he turns it on the plane, a massive cloud of black smoke filling the air.
Sarah Ahmed, one of the last people off the plane, said smoke began to seep into the passenger compartment and she could see flames up against the windows.
Ahmed said everyone in the plane immediately began to panic.
‘It was chaos,’ she told WLSTV. ‘I thought it was the day I was going to die.’
‘We were almost up in the air. We were full throttle, full speed ahead and then we heard this huge bang and there’s fire at the window.’
Ahmed said everyone on the right side of the plane jumped up and ran to the left side.
The plane screeched to a stop and a ‘stampede’ of passengers immediately began to yell ‘open the door, open the door!’.
‘Everyone’s screaming and jumping on top of each other to open the door,’ she said.
‘Within that time, I think it was seven seconds, there was now smoke in the plane and the fire is right up against the window.’
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the plane made an emergency stop around 2.35pm after experiencing a problem during takeoff.
An earlier FAA statement said the plane had blown a tire, but officials later deleted that information from the statement.
American Airlines said in a statement that the takeoff was aborted due to ‘an engine-related mechanical issue’.
A federal official said the flight experienced an ‘uncontained engine failure’, in which engine parts break off and are spewed outside the engine.
The danger of such a failure is that engine pieces effectively become shrapnel and can cause extensive damage to the aircraft.
The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the incident and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Chicago Fire Department Chief Timothy Sampey said the 20 people who were hospitalized had suffered minor injuries during the rapid evacuation down the plane’s escape chutes.
American Airlines said one flight attendant also suffered non-critical injuries.
The injuries mainly consisted of minor bruising and ankle injuries.
‘This could have been devastating if it had happened later,’ Sampey added.
Passenger Gary Schiavone was sitting in the middle of the plane when he saw a ‘big, red ball of flame’ in the window, which then cracked due to the heat.
‘Twenty seconds later, we would’ve been up in the air,’ he told ABC News. ‘We would’ve been done.’
Schiavone noted that the explosion rang out as the passengers were 30 seconds into watching the safety video – which just happened to be on the instruction that they should not grab their luggage during an emergency.
‘It could have caused a big problem,’ Schiavone told NBC Chicago. ‘Don’t get your luggage in a situation like that.’
Firefighters were on the scene in less than 90 seconds, officials said.
But that was enough time for the fire to consume the plane’s right-side engine and wing.
A chemical foam and dry chemical was then used to knock out the fire, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Firefighters remained at the scene for several hours as they put out ‘hot spots’ on the plane.
At least six ambulances responded to the scene and passengers were bused back to the terminal.
American Airlines said it was operating a special flight to take the passengers to Miami on Friday night.
Jose Castillo, whose father was on the flight, said the passengers were told it would be three to four days before they would receive the belongings they left on the plane.
The runway was closed immediately after the evacuation as the FAA was called to investigate.
Four of the airport’s eight runways are currently open, which O’Hare officials said is enough to handle the night’s traffic.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.
Another plane burst into flames on Friday at a Fort Lauderdale runway in Florida.
The landing gear of FedEx Flight 910, which was arriving from Memphis, collapsed after it touched down at the airport, according to NBC Miami.
The plane skidded down the runway before it caught on fire.
Firefighters extinguished the flames with foam and the runway was temporarily shut down. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any injuries.
WHAT CAUSES UNCONTAINED ENGINE FAILURES?
Uncontained engine failures are unusual thanks to improvements in designs and the metallurgy.
There are many possible causes, including overheating, runway debris or large birds that get sucked into the engine or parts that break when they wear out but aren’t replaced during maintenance checks.
Tom Walsh, an airline pilot who also works as a security consultant, said that engines that break apart can be especially serious if the parts end up cutting fuel lines or damaging other vital components of the aircraft.
But he said even such catastrophic failures don’t necessarily doom a plane – even if a pilot runs out of runway and must take off.
‘Planes are meant to fly with one engine,’ said Walsh, who has also flown Boeing 767s. ‘We are trained so that we can lose the engine at the worst possible time … and then still successfully take off and land.’
One of the best-known incidents of uncontained engine failure occurred in 1989, when 111 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-10 crashed while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa. There were 185 survivors.
Such engine failures are taken ‘very seriously’ in the aviation industry, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety consultant. It’s mandatory that airlines report the failures to the National Transportation Safety Board, he said.
‘It’s something everyone in aviation safety tracks very carefully,’ said Cox, president of Safety Operating Systems.
Engines are especially vulnerable to overheating that can cause parts to fail during takeoffs when they are already operating at very high temperatures, said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and expert on aircraft maintenance.
The giant blades inside the engines are revolving at about 13,000 rpm, he said. When one comes loose, it’s like firing a bullet, he added.
