An overseas flight made an emergency landing in Winnipeg Thursday afternoon after fear of a fire on board.
“It was scary. Any landing is a good landing though,” said Laura Simos, one of 277 people aboard Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 en route from Hong Kong to Chicago which diverted to Winnipeg’s James Richardson International Airport and landed safely at 12:53 p.m.
“I felt the plane make a dive and it was diving for a while you could feel the descent of the altitude.”
The roughly 13-hour flight was about an hour outside of Chicago when a ”fire indicator’ light came on warning that they may have been smoke or fire in the plane’s cargo hold. Upon landing, Winnipeg Fire & Paramedic service crews searched the plane while passengers were offloaded but found no sign of fire, a spokesperson for the Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA) said.
Passengers told Global News that while in-flight, they didn’t really know what was going on.
“They didn’t spread a whole lot of information we saw a pilot go back into the plane a couple times. A couple people ran back and forth.” Said Jim Krolczyk, a passenger trying to get home to Milwaukee.
The incident drew onlookers from around the airport area.
“(When a fire indicator light comes on) it’s a serious problem. You want to get to an airport as soon as you can.” Said Dennis Giguere, retired Air Canada pilot who said he had a fire indicator light come on twice before in his career, but never in mid-flight. Giguere said, when faced with those situations, the important thing is to keep calm and remember that pilots are trained to handle them.
“There’s no point in getting excited up there. There’s nothing you can do.”
This is far from the first time an aircraft has made an emergency landing in Winnipeg. The city’s geographical location and large runway make it a pilot’s choice.
“We’re sort of on their radar to be an airport to divert to if there was an emergency.” Said Christine Payne, with WAA.
It’s not known what caused the fire indicator light to come on. Passengers were just relieved it didn’t indicate an actual fire.
“I have a good story. That was my first emergency landing. I’m flying 200,000 miles a year. It had to happen sometime.” Remarked one passenger.
Immediate plans for how to get the stranded passengers to Chicago were not clear at first. Thursday evening, WAA said Cathay Pacific arranged to have a second Boeing 777 transport the passengers to their destination late Thursday night.
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