BBC

Thursday, 8 March, 2001, 15:35 GMT Plane turns back after fire warning

The pilot turned back an hour into the flight A passenger jet with 140 people onboard has been forced to turn back to Glasgow Airport after a fire was detected in the luggage hold.

The Continental Airlines Boeing 757 was enroute to Newark Airport, in the USA, when a warning light alerted the pilot to smoke in the hold.

The plane was an hour into its trans-Atlantic trip when the pilot turned back.

All the passengers were safely taken off the plane and into the terminal building as engineers began to empty the hold to search for the source of the smoke.

A Scottish Airports spokeswoman said: "The 140 passengers were safely disembarked when the plane landed at Glasgow at 1.45pm and the situation is still being assessed."

Strathclyde Fire Brigade said it was called to the airport after receiving a report of a "small fire in the luggage hold".

A spokesman said 20 firefighters were on standby.

A spokesman for Strathclyde Police said they too had been alerted to the incident.

He added: "The plane is currently being examined."

The airport spokeswoman added: "Glasgow Airport was closed for half-an-hour to allow the plane to perform an emergency landing.

"Once it landed the airport's fire service and local emergency services were deployed to the scene and inflatable chutes were used to get the passengers off."

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), March 08, 2001