Long Beach, CA – At least four people were injured on Thursday when a JetBlue plane made an emergency landing at the airport in Long Beach, California, on Thursday and passengers evacuated by slides, an airport spokeswoman said.
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JetBlue Flight 1416, which had just departed for Austin, Texas, with 142 passengers and five crew members, returned to Long Beach after pilots got an overheating warning for one of the engines, Long Beach Airport spokeswoman Stephanie Montuya-Morisky said.
She said all passengers were evacuated from the plane by slides after it landed at 9:30 a.m. PDT (1630 GMT). Four passengers were treated at the scene for minor injuries and one was taken to a hospital, she said.
JetBlue said in a written statement that the flight returned to Long Beach Airport after the crew reported an issue with the No. 2 engine.
The statement said the plane landed safely and that everyone evacuated on emergency slides. The airline said no injured were reported at the time.
A runway was shut down at the airport, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Los Angeles, while passengers were removed from the disabled plane but was reopened about two hours later.
Actor Jackson Rathbone, best known for his role as a vampire in the “Twilight” films, said in a series of Twitter posts that he had been on the plane.
“Our right engine exploded and our cabin filled with smoke,” he said in one tweet.
“The oxygen masks did not deploy, but the brave stewardesses came around and manually deployed them,” Rathbone said in another tweet. “It was rough, the plane was rocking.”
Rathbone said that once the plane was on the ground he grabbed his son and jumped down an inflatable ramp with his wife following.
I’ve always wondered how the airlines expect elderly passengers, or passengers with disabilities to escape down the emergency chutes? In previous flights, even when passengers have survived emergency landings, they have been injured going down those escape chutes. Other passengers have a fear of jumping down a slide, and some in the past, had to be literally shoved down the escape chutes.
Thank Gd that everyone is safely on the ground. It’s amazing to me the cool calm response of the staff – they are to be thanked and admired.