British Airways Plane Catches Fire In Las Vegas: Passengers Describe Escaping Death On Twitter

According to Twitter, the hashtag #ba2276 is trending because a British Airways plane has caught fire in Las Vegas. With shocking photos of the plane on fire, there have been 52,300 tweets about this trend that has landed in Twitter in a short period of time.

UPDATE 6:18 PM — Latest information is seven passengers from @British_Airways flight 2276 received medical treatment for minor injuries.

— Harry Reid International Airport (@LASairport) September 9, 2015

As reported by the Guardian, the flight was bound for London when it left Las Vegas and quickly aborted take-off. The Boeing 777 experienced the left engine’s “catastrophic failure,” which sent flames and smoke shooting up into the air. Thankfully, the 13 crew members and 159 passengers were able to escape the plane’s fire via slides.

The famous McCarran Airport was the location of horrible-looking fire — which reportedly caused seven injuries to people escaping the fire. It’s the same famous airport wherein crew members often joke upon take-off that the planes will have to leave the gravitational pull of the gaming commission, since Las Vegas is the unofficial gambling capital of the United States, if not the world. But it was no laughing matter when passengers looked back at the burning plane that they escaped — a fire that took about 50 firefighters to extinguish.

Passengers like Dominic Worthington have tweeted amazing photos of what it was like to have escaped such a harrowing plane fire.

“Just hitting what I have experienced today seriously scary stuff#BA2276”

Jacob Steinberg, a football and tennis writer for The Guardian, posted photos and videos of the aftermath of the plane fire. Jacob also defended those passengers being criticized for taking their luggage with them, against evacuation orders, because Steinberg explained that people go into panic mode during situations like that.

“To give you an idea of what the fire was like (that’s my mate Jez, who just had a knee reconstruction, on the run).”

As noted by longterm paramedic Robert Davidson, the pilots deserve quite a bit of kudos for helping to save many lives and sending out the mayday call and aborting takeoff. One would shudder to think of such a catastrophic engine fire happening while the plane was still in the air.

“Kudos to pilot, imagine if it had happened a few seconds later! British Airways plane on fire at Las Vegas #BA2276“

Already on Twitter, users like Naresh are wondering about the source of the fire and taking a close-up view of the fuselage to try and determine what may have started the fire.

“Closer look at the damage to the B777-200ER G-VIIO. Did someone leave the engine valve open during refuelling? #BA2276“

[Image via Twitter]