Yesterday, an American Airlines plane had to make an emergency landing after taking off from Dallas-Forth Worth Airport, originally destined for Seattle. What happened next caused a bit of a stir on the ground.
According to the CBS local affiliate in the Dallas-Forth worth area, people across North Texas began calling 911 to report that there was an airplane on fire.
The airplane was also reported to be on fire by news outlets.
But that isn’t what happened.
The CBS affiliate has the real story after an update:
It may have appeared to be a plane on fire but officials with the airline explained that a compressor on the plane failed. The stall caused fuel to leak from the back of the plane and that left a trail of flames. The engine was not on fire.
If you look at the URL of this article, you can see they had incorrect information in the beginning as well: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2016/07/27/american-airlines-flight-makes-emergency-landing-after-fire/
While a compressor failing is serious enough, it does not reach the level of a fire on the airplane. That could be catastrophic vs. something that is cause for concern (and cause for emergency landing).
The view of this from the airplane is pretty cool, but probably left the passengers concerned as well:
Ultimately, the plane landed safely, and that’s what matters overall.