KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airlines has been forced to ground a plane to refill life jackets inflated by panicked passengers on a flight bound for Incheon, South Korea on Sunday.
Flight MH066, an Airbus A330-300 aircraft, had been diverted to Hong Kong after a power generator failed and an auxiliary unit had kicked in. The plane landed safely and all 271 passengers were unharmed.
But one panicked passenger inflated a life jacket before the plane landed, prompting others to do the same, local daily, The Star reported.
“One passenger did so and others followed suit. However, they were not instructed by our cabin crew to do so as it did not involve an emergency landing,” the paper reported the airline said as saying.
Citing an unnamed official from the airline, the paper reported that the plane will be grounded until all its life jackets are ready for use again.
“Once they are inflated, they cannot be used again until they are refilled. The gas used to refill the life jackets are classified as dangerous goods and must be packed carefully before the aircraft is certified to fly again,” the official was quoted as saying.
Yesterday, the airline's CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that the generator failure on the flight was technical issue and that the flight was diverted to Hong Kong as a precautionary move.
The incident is the latest in a series of misfortunes to hit the loss-making airline.
On Friday, birds flew into a Malaysia Airlines aircraft while it was landing in Nepal, but all 180 passengers and crew on board the flight were reported to be unharmed, accordng to a Reuters report.
The report said the location of the Kathmandu airport, surrounded by hills and forests, made it common for birds to fly into planes.
On March 8, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared less than an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing.
A multinational search for the plane and 239 people on board is continuing.
The Malay Mail
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-airlines-grounds-plane-as-panicked-passengers-inflate-life-jackets
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