A British Airways A321 has made an emergency landing after smoke allegedly engulfed the entire cabin. Passengers on British Airways flight BA422 from London Heathrow to Valencia have been seen using the evacuation slide on the runway in Valencia, Spain
The aircraft involved is G-MEDN, an 11 year old A321, ex BMI aircraft.
Passengers are seen using the evacuation slide on the runway at Valencia, Spain, in a video shared online. In another clip, thick grey smoke is seen in the cabin itself.
One frightened passenger mentioned, “Apparently they flew for 10 minutes with the cabin full of smoke, no info from crew and oxygen masks failed to release.”
No injuries have been reported.
A spokesman for British Airways said:
“We are aware of an incident involving one of our aircraft in Valencia. We will release more information as soon as we have it.”
I remember a study from Airbus about O2+ fire in cabin… They couldn’t really conclude, as the volume of O2 compared to the volume of the cabin wouldn’t make any difference with a fire. Especially because some of the O2 will be inhalated by pax. In case of a dense smoke in my plane, I would probably release the masks. In a fire on ground, people die first by smokes inhalation and most of smokes in cabin are not caused by a fire. I think that this story of not releasing the masks should be seriously reconsidered.
„Oxygen masks failed to release”. It is PROHIBITED to release oxygen masks with smoke/fire in the cabin because of the air circulation inside the aircraft. If they would have oxygen masks on they would basically breathe the smoke in straight to their bodies which will cause deaths. Only pilots in the cockpit can wear their oxygen masks when there is smoke inside as it’s other air circulation system.
Why would oxygen masks be released? The last thing you want in a smoke or fire situation is more oxygen. The the pilots dumped the cabin pressure the cabin altitude would still be less than 14,000 and I am sure they were descending.
“oxygen masks failed to release”. What an idiotic thing to say. Those oxygen masks are only useful in a decompression. If there was a fire onboard the last thing you’d want is oxygen from those masks fueling a fire.