Two people have been injured after a fire was detected on board a United Airlines flight on Friday, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
United Flight 32 was headed from Japan to the Philippines when the crew was alerted that flames had erupted in the aircraft’s cargo hold just 50 minutes into the trip.
The plane carrying 142 passengers and crew was still over Japan when its pilots turned back and landed at Kansai International Airport near Osaka around 6am ET.
United Flight 32 was met on the runway by emergency crews and fire trucks, although there was no visible damage to the outside of the aircraft.
A United Airlines spokesperson told the Daily Mail that two passengers were taken to a local hospital after suffering minor injuries in the emergency.
However, they said crews could not find any signs that a fire had actually broken out after an inspection at Kansai International.
‘United Airlines flight 32 from Tokyo-Narita to Cebu, Philippines, diverted to Osaka due to an indication of potential fire in the cargo hold. The aircraft landed safely and passengers deplaned via slides,’ United Airlines said in a statement Friday morning.
It remains unclear what triggered the warning of a fire on board the Boeing 737-800.
Two people were injured after reports of a fire on board a United Airlines flight over Japan Friday
Passengers were seen being rushed off the jet using the inflatable emergency slides on Friday.
‘I was a little unsettled, wondering what the reason was, but there was no sign of confusion,’ one passenger on board Flight 32 said, according to Newsweek.
‘After the emergency landing, we were instructed to evacuate, which made me panic. It took about five minutes to evacuate,’ he continued.
United did not provide any details on how the two passengers were injured during the incident.
The airline, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the largest air travel providers in the world, offering flights for both short trips inside the US and long journeys throughout the world.
In 2024, United carried a record 173.6 million passengers, up roughly five percent from the year before.
However, the airline has faced some safety and operational challenges in recent years.
In August, a failure in United’s weight and balance computer system grounded flights across the US for hours, leading to hundreds of delays and cancellations.
Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 captured United Airlines Flight 32’s sudden course change after the crew detected a fire on board on September 12
All of United’s flights heading for Chicago were halted at their departing airports, and flights to United hubs in Denver, Newark, Houston, and San Francisco were also affected.
In May, two United passenger planes clipped wings at San Francisco International Airport while taxiing on the ground.
Even more problems were reported in 2024, when five accidents involving United passenger flights took place in just one week.
In March of last year, multiple planes were forced to make emergency landings due to a wide range of dangerous mechanical failures, including one plane’s engine catching on fire when it sucked in bubble wrap mid-flight and another passenger jet losing a tire after takeoff.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in October that it found no significant safety issues in a review of United Airlines.
The agency also ended its enhanced oversight and approval process, which had been delaying United from adding new aircraft and services to customers.
According to AirlineRatings, an airline review site, United was ranked fifth among the safest full-service airlines in the US this year, behind Alaska, Hawaiian, American, and Delta.
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