In smoke-filled plane, a rush for bags
A video has gone viral that shows scenes inside Emirates Flight EK 521 soon after it crash-landed at the Dubai International Airport on Wednesday afternoon. The footage from a mobile phone camera shows sunlight streaming in from the open emergency exits, oxygen masks dangling and passengers standing around, some looking nonplussed, while others are reaching for the overhead bins and taking out their suitcases and other belongings.
In the beginning of the two-minute, nine-second footage, children are heard crying and a male voice is heard saying in Malayalam, “Pedikkan Onnumilla (There is nothing to fear)”, and someone else is saying “Va va va va (come, come, come, come)”.
In the middle of this, while a man repeatedly keeps asking for his laptop, directing his child to carry it, the voice of a male flight attendant rises above the din: “Leave the bags, please jump and slide, leave the bags, leave everything, please jump and slide. This way, this way.” He is obviously concerned that people are dawdling over their belongings rather than getting out of the plane as quickly as possible through the emergency exits and down the chute to the tarmac to safety.
A woman starts yelling in Tamil: “Yellarum vittuttu po! (Everybody leave and go!).”
Just then a woman flight attendant injects a note of high urgency into the proceedings by screaming: “Jump and slide! Jump and Slide! Jump! Jump! Jump! Leave your bags behind jump and slide.”
At 1.07 minutes, the camera captures a male flight attendant rushing into the back of the plane desperately exhorting stragglers, “Come! Come! Come!”
Mobile phone camera shows the emergency exit and people going through it. By this time, the person recording the events has almost reached the emergency exit. It shows the mouth of the exit with the sound of the passenger ahead sliding out to safety, yelling as the attendant shouts,“Quick! Quick! Quick!”
Below on the tarmac, many are already headed away from the plane, some couples holding on to each other as a red jeep stands by.
At 1.22 minutes, the footage momentarily focusses on the plane’s engine on fire beneath a wing that is broken.
Someone shouts in Malayalam, “Mone Odu, Mone Odu (Run son, run son).”
A man cries out Swamiye! Swamiye! as he slides down the chute, then Shiva Shiva! After a while he is saying, Thaaye!
By this time, the images have become an indistinct blur before the video ends abruptly. Subsequent pictures show people dragging their trolley suitcases along the tarmac as thick black smoke and flames engulf the plane.
Air India said the aircraft had been canceled and sold. An Air India plane trapped under a pedestrian bridge has Read more
