Tap Air Portugal flight to UK ‘fills with smoke’ as passengers need ‘urgent’ medical help
A Lisbon to London Heathrow plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Porto because of “smoke on board.”
The alert was sounded this afternoon around 4.45pm with emergency services rushing to the Tap Air plane after it landed. Authorities said that there were 194 passengers on the plane along with crew who were in need of help and 11 have been injured.
Portuguese Civil Protection sources told respected Portuguese daily Correio da Manha: “There are 194 passengers on board and crew and passengers are in need of urgent medical assistance.” It is unclear so far what caused the smoke on the plane.
There were 57 emergency personnel as well as 15 vehicles on the runway by the TAP plane that landed just over an hour ago. The emergency responders included police, firefighters and Red Cross officials as well as paramedics.
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Other planes had to wait in the air for permission to land so the aircraft at the centre of the drama could make an emergency landing. Flight TP1356 left Lisbon at 3.46pm local time for London’s Heathrow Airport before the diversion to Porto. It landed in Porto around 5pm local time.
Local reports later said that nine people suffered affects from smoke inhalation and were hospitalized while two other passengers received medical assistance near the plane having suffered headaches and sickness. A map of the plane’s flight path shows it heading north and into Spain before it loops round near Valladolid and heads to the airport in Porto.
According to ANA – the national airport operator in Portugal- the incident was due to “technical problems” with the aircraft, which ended up landing safely at 5:10pm at Francisco Sá Carneiro airport in Porto. The Mirror has contacted Tap Air for comment.
Meanwhile, last month a cracked windshield on a Jet2 flight to Tenerife caused an emergency landing at a UK airport. Flight tracking services reported that Jet2 flight LS633 was forced to divert to Manchester due to the issue on February 6. The flight had departed from East Midlands Airport, but was forced to redirect shortly after take off ahead of the two-and-a-half hour flight.
According to Flight Aware, passengers ended up getting off the plane in Manchester rathen than the sunny landscape of the Canary Islands just before 11.30am. In a statement, Jet2 said: “We can confirm that flight LS633 from East Midlands to Tenerife South diverted to Manchester Airport earlier today, due to a technical issue. At no point was safety compromised, and the aircraft landed as normal before customers were transferred onto a replacement aircraft. We would like to apologise to customers for the delay.”
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