The Jet2 7.40am flight to Alicante was surging down the runway when the captain braked hard after smoke had begun to billow in the cabin. The aeroplane came to a sudden halt on the tarmac and, in the dark as it was an early morning flight, the passengers and crew leaving the craft via its emergency chutes.
Passenger Graham Divers said of the incident: “I was sitting in row 11 and I could smell smoke as we were accelerating hard.
I looked up. One or two passengers, including myself, had our reading lights on ad when we looked up to the lamps and the ceiling, I could actually see smoke swirling around and I thought, ‘Oops – there’s something not right here’.
“We were accelerating very, very hard down the runway at this stage and I was abot to scream out to the cabin crew when obviously the pilot realised there was something wrong and he immediately throttled the engines back and put the brakes on.”
All 189 passengers were taken off the plane, with 17 being injured, four taken to hospital and 13 treated at the scene.
Photo: Getty.
