A SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) plane experienced a technical issue with its brakes upon landing in Tokyo on Monday (Aug 12) at 7.38 am (local time), but all 276 passengers and crew members were unhurt.
An SIA spokesperson said the carrier’s ground engineering team resolved the technical issue and replaced one of the tyres on the Boeing 787-10 aircraft for flight SQ638. There were 260 passengers and 16 crew on board.
Consequently, this caused a delay of slightly over two hours to the flight that departed Tokyo for Singapore at 1.28 pm (local time).
The spokesperson said: “The safety of our customers and staff is our top priority,” when asked for the company’s response to fliers’ possible concerns about flying with the national carrier.
Rico Merkert, a professor of transport at the University of Sydney, does not think the latest incident will dent fliers’ confidence in the airline or flying.
“Compared to a potential engine fire, this will make it even less problematic in the eyes of the average traveller. Many future SIA passengers will not even be aware that this incident has happened; and those who are (aware), typically forget about it after a short while,” the academic commented.
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Nobody got hurt, and there will always be a small risk despite aviation being statistically the safest mode of travelling, Prof Merkert added.
AFP reported that smoke was seen coming from a landing SIA plane and this had forced a runway at Japan’s Narita Airport to close temporarily, officials said, though responders found no signs of fire and no one was injured.
The smoke prompted six fire engines and two ambulances to rush to the scene, and Narita’s runway B was closed from around 7.40 am, shortly after the flight landed at the gateway to Tokyo, airport and fire officials said.
“We received a report of white smoke rising from the left engine,” a Narita city fire official told AFP.
But there was no sign of fire and no one was injured, she said, adding that firefighters left the scene after observing the plane for over an hour.
The flight reported the smoke to the airport after landing, an airport official told AFP.
“It communicated that there was a possibility that it experienced a problem when it landed,” a spokesman at Narita International Airport told AFP.
Pieces of tyre were found on the runway, the airport spokesman said.
SIA’s latest incident took place after one of its flights, SQ321, encountered severe turbulence en route to Singapore from London when the plane was flying over Myanmar on May 21, resulting in one fatality and multiple injuries. The plane made an emergency landing in Bangkok.
Additional reporting by AFP
