One of the worst things that can happen after you have taken off from your chosen airport is to discover that there is a fire on board the aircraft.
Thankfully this type of event is extremely rare, and most aircraft that fly all over the world on a daily basis take off and land without any incidents at all.
But it would appear that on Sunday 11 th January the possibility of a fire in the cockpit of an aircraft was responsible for the emergency landing of the same plane. It was a Virgin Atlantic aircraft and it had taken off from Heathrow Airport with the intention of reaching Chicago.
Unfortunately the unwanted event meant that it touched down safely in Shannon Airport, which is in the Irish Republic. Perhaps predictably, reports of the incident are very different depending on which source you read. Some of the tabloids reported that there had indeed been a fire in the cockpit but that it was extinguished safely before the aircraft landed.
Virgin itself said there had in fact been no fire, but the plane had made an emergency landing just to be on the safe side. Needless to say the plane then went through rigorous safety checks to determine what the cause of the problem was.
There were one hundred and fifty six passengers on board at the time, and no one appears to have been hurt. However one tabloid newspaper reported that one person had required treatment of some kind.
So what is the real story here? Clearly the plane needed to land to preserve the safety of all on board, and for that the pilot and crew should be commended. In the end Virgin will not give extensive details on what did or did not happen; you could expect them to be cagey given the fact that they may still be waiting for comprehensive results of tests on the aircraft to be released to them.
According to a source at the airport where the plane unexpectedly landed, there was a fire, but according to Virgin there was not. This is one of those news stories where you will probably never be sure what happened. And since the problem does appear to have been in the cockpit even the passengers are unlikely to know what went on.
The fire services were called out however, although this could happen in this type of situation as a matter of course. Whatever the outcome may be, the main thing is that everyone disembarked – albeit in a different country to the one they were planning on getting to – quite safely and according to someone at the airport they were being taken good care of.
Air travel still does remain as one of the safest forms of travel there is. The fact that this incident ended safely is good news, and hopefully whatever happened to cause the emergency landing will be solved in the fullness of time, to enable the plane to fly safely once more.