A Qantas A330 has been evacuated on the ground at Sydney Airport due to a hydraulic issue. The cabin was filled with smoke upon the aircraft’s return to the airport.
Qantas said flight 575 returned to Sydney shortly after takeoff on Sunday morning due to a hydraulic issue.
“Once back at the gate, the captain decided to evacuate the aircraft as a precaution and three emergency slides were deployed,” the airline said in a statement
“Passengers were evacuated through both the slides and normal exits.”
Qantas 575 was scheduled to fly between Sydney and Perth, which is around a 5-hour flight. The aircraft, VH-EBC, is an A330-200 which is 16 years old, and previously flew with Qantas Subsidiary Jetstar.
Qantas A330 Landing in Tokyo | © Alan Wilson
Passengers took to social media with their experiences from flight 575:
“Just had to evacuate my flight to Perth after engineering issues. Everyone had to exit the plane via slide onto Sydney tarmac after the cabin filled with smoke and the captain screamed evacuate,” she tweeted.
Another passenger, Sydney mechanic Rahman Akbari, told the Daily Telegraph that the captain appeared calm but it was a “little bit” scary when the crew began yelling “evacuate, evacuate” on the tarmac.
“Initially it was just the smell, we could smell something but after a few minutes this fume starting building up in the cabin”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://twitter.com/Qantas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@Qantas</a> well that was fun, turning out to be an eventful holiday. Cabin crew were fantastic <a href=”https://t.co/3Dki1gnXrq”>pic.twitter.com/3Dki1gnXrq</a></p>— evilhomer (@EVILH0MER) <a href=”https://twitter.com/EVILH0MER/status/1205994680984338432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 14, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Were you onboard this aircraft? Let us know your experience in the comments below
