Tibet Airlines plane aborts take-off, catches fire, causing minor injuries

BEIJING: China's Tibet Airlines said that all passengers and crew had been evacuated from an Airbus A319 plane that caught fire after an aborted take-off in the south-western city of Chongqing on Thursday (May 12).

There were no deaths and only minor injuries among the 113 passengers and nine crew members on board, the airline said in a statement.

The incident came less than two months after the deadly crash of a China Eastern Airlines plane led the country's aviation regulator to launch a safety drive.

Unverified video on social media showed a Tibet Airlines plane with heavy smoke and flames pouring from the left side of the aircraft as passengers and crew walked away.

The aircraft involved is a nine-year-old A319, one of the smallest versions of the A320 family. It is powered by CFM56 engines from CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and Safran, according to Airfleets.net.

A subsidiary of Air China, Tibet Airlines is a regional airline based in Lhasa. It has a fleet of 39 planes, including 28 A319s, according to Airfleets.net.

On Mar 21, a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in mountains in southern China, killing everyone on board. So far there have been few clues about the cause of the accident.