Mystery after a second Boeing 737 aircraft landed in less than a month due to suspicions about a fire on board

Qantas Airways, Australia's National Air Airline, said the fire alarm that determined on the pilot of a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which took off from Sydney to launch an emergency call “before landing on Friday at Auckland Airport, it was probably a false alarm, Reuters reports. less than a month.

The pilot of the Boeing 737 aircraft transmitted the call “Mayday” and requested an emergency landing after receiving intermittent signals on a possible fire in the freight, the airline said in a press release.

Janice Peterson, a TV presenter of SBS World News, was on board and reported that the flight “seemed to go relatively smoothly” until the last hour. “I saw the members of the worried cabin crew, moving quickly to the back of the plane, according to the pilot's instructions. It seemed unusual,” she said for the post she was working on.

“The passengers had not been informed about an emergency at that time,” he said, adding that, after a while, there was an announcement of the pilot who “acknowledged that smoke had been detected in the freight compartment.”

“The pilot added that the firefighters will evaluate the situation after landing at Auckland, but said we should be able to land on the stairs. He also mentioned the possibility of using the exhaust slides,” Petersen continued. “Finally, everything was clarified in about 10 minutes [după aterizare]with about five fire crews on the spot, and the situation was managed professionally, with minimal agitation, ”she concluded.

Emergency teams did not detect the traces of any fire on board the Boeing plane

A spokesman for Qantas said that the pilots “intermittently received signals about a possible fire in the freight compartment” about an hour before arrival in Auckland, but a preliminary investigation suggested that “there was no fire in the front freight compartment.”

“Our engineers will inspect the aircraft to determine the cause,” the spokesman added.

A company spokesman said that on board the flight between Sydney and Auckland were 156 passengers. The airline said that everyone left the aircraft.

Auckland Airport said in a statement that emergency services were waiting earlier during the morning for an aircraft that had reported problems.

“The landing track now returns to normal, but there may be easy delays in the departures and arrivals of the flights,” the statement sent by the representatives of the airport is mentioned.

A similar incident also affected a Boeing 737 of United Airlines

Although the Reuters Agency does not specify the exact model of the Boeing aircraft that landed on Friday at Auckland, the Flightware Air Races monitoring sites show that this is a Boeing 737-800.

The same Boeing aircraft model was involved in a similar incident on September 12, when a Boeing 737-800 of the US Airlines American airline that took off from Tokyo to the Philippine was diverted to land at Osaka due to suspicions about a fire on board.

Flight 32 of United, with 135 passengers and 7 crew members on board, was diverted to Kansai International Airport in Osaka after taking off from Narita Airport near Tokyo.

All passengers and crew members on the plane were evacuated through the emergency slides, and two people were transported to the hospital to receive medical care after suffering light injuries during the aircraft evacuation.

Boeing also stated that the checks did not indicate the existence of a fire in the aircraft. The Japanese Ministry of Transport treated the event as a serious incident and sent investigators to inspect the aircraft, interview the crew and analyze the flight recorders. The official investigation is in progress and neither Boeing, nor the Japanese ministry, have not yet provided additional information on the incident.

Japanese television Asahi has reported to be investigated if the alert was caused by a sensor or system error, that is, if the warning could have triggered the wrong way

Continue the wave of incidents in which Boeing aircraft are involved

The incident takes place after at the end of August a Boeing 777 aircraft aircraft, which took off from London to Beijing, with 265 people, carried out an unpardoned landing in Siberia due to an engine problem.

Another Boeing plane, model 737-800 operated by the Russian S7 company, returned to the airport where he took off at the end of July. The Russian authorities did not offer details about the problems encountered by the aircraft that had taken off from the Novosibirsk destination.

The Boeing reputation has been strongly hit by a series of safety incidents that took place from January 2024, eventually leading to the resignation of the company's executive director.

The American Congress has also initiated an investigation into the safety practices of the aircraft manufacturer.

These problems were exacerbated by the collapse on June 12 of a Boeing 787-8 “Dreamliner” in the city of Ahmedabad in western India in one of the worst air accidents in recent decades. The accident marked the first air accident with victims in which a “Dreamliner” Boeing aircraft, the aircraft manufacturer's aircraft, was ever involved.