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The fire spread quickly after starting near the end of the plane\u2019s cabin. But the captain, despite being informed of the escalating danger, did not announce an evacuation order on the intercom.<\/p>\n
What followed was a chaotic scene of nearly 170 passengers shouting and pushing one another in panic, desperate to get off the plane and save their lives.<\/p>\n
It was Tuesday night, at the airport in Busan, South Korea, with millions celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday. Some were headed to Hong Kong, on Air Busan Flight ABL391, which was running late. It was still on the ground minutes after its scheduled takeoff of 10:15 p.m., when passengers spotted a flame in the overhead bins in the plane\u2019s rear left.<\/p>\n
The incident happened barely a month after the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil, and that tragedy, which involved another budget airline, probably would have been fresh on the minds of people onboard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cFlames were coming out of the gaps between the overhead bin doors,\u201d Shin Min-su, who was on the flight, told reporters<\/a> later. \u201cPeople were screaming trying to get out, but there was a line so they were stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Shin said he got up to try to put out the fire. But when he attempted to open the overhead bins, a flight attendant told him not to.<\/p>\n The cabin crew reported the situation to the captain, who shut off the plane\u2019s hydraulic and fuel systems and, according to the airline, declared an emergency evacuation. But passengers got no word of this. The airline would say later, \u201cthere was no time for a separate announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of smoke filled up inside,\u201d Jeong Yeong-jun, another passenger told KBS, a South Korean broadcaster<\/a>. \u201cFrom then on, the passengers just kept pushing forward, shouting around me, \u2018Open the door, open the door!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kim Dong-wan and other passengers told reporters<\/a> that they had opened some of the plane\u2019s doors on their own and jumped onto the slides, to escape. At least one of the emergency doors was opened by a flight attendant, Yonhap News Agency reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Air Busan did not provide a detailed accounting of the evacuation by Wednesday evening, but all 176 people on board \u2014 including 169 passengers, two pilots, four flight attendants and a flight engineer \u2014 survived. Three passengers sustained minor injuries from the evacuation process, while four flight attendants were briefly hospitalized after inhaling smoke, the airline said.<\/p>\n After escaping, some passengers began filming the scene and sharing videos with news organizations. The footage showed smoke billowing out of an emergency exit as passengers slid down the emergency slides, some rolling off onto the tarmac with no one helping them to land.<\/p>\n People yelled for their families. \u201cWe\u2019re lucky we didn\u2019t take off!\u201d someone said.<\/p>\n Firefighters reached the scene minutes later, after the plane had emptied out. They focused on saving the plane\u2019s wings because 35,000 pounds of fuel was stored there. The blaze was extinguished by 11:30 p.m., but the fuselage of the Airbus A321-200 jet was destroyed.<\/p>\n The lack of an announcement to passengers raises concerns about whether Air Busan\u2019s crew had followed standard safety procedures, aviation experts said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kim In-gyu, the managing director of the Korea Aerospace University\u2019s Flight Training Center, said that proper protocol required the captain to announce emergency procedures on the cabin\u2019s intercom. He added that the flight attendants should typically guide passengers by using megaphones to give them clear, short commands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIdeally, the cabin crew would take charge of evacuating the aircraft,\u201d said Keith Tonkin, an aviation expert and managing director of Aviation Projects in Brisbane, Australia. In a best-case scenario, \u201cpassengers would be following directions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. Kim added that the flight attendants should have first moved the passengers away from the fire. Then they should have gone down the slides first, helped passengers coming down and directed them away from the slides. Finally, he said, the airplane doors that were not emergency exits were supposed to be opened only by crew members.<\/p>\n In a statement, Air Busan, a subsidiary of Asiana Airlines, one of South Korea\u2019s two main airlines, said its crew had followed protocol, and apologized to its customers. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On Wednesday, the transport ministry said that it had conducted a counterterrorism investigation and found that no prohibited items had been carried onto the aircraft.<\/p>\n Over the past few weeks, South Korean transport officials have been under pressure to overhaul the nation\u2019s aviation safety standards. The crash on Dec. 29, in which a Jeju Air jet crashed at Muan International Airport, killed 179 people. Only two people onboard survived.<\/p>\n A safety inspection by the government found that seven South Korean airports altogether had concrete structures containing navigation devices near their runways, similar to the one in Muan \u2014 into which the Jeju Air jet crashed and which did not meet safety recommendations. The authorities also found that several budget airlines had failed to comply with safety checks.<\/p>\n