Virgin plane in Gatwick Airport emergency landing

[Terpe]

Flights in and out of Gatwick Airport were suspended after a plane was forced to make an emergency landing after smoke was reported in the cabin.


Source:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-17730154

[Terpe]

I just listened to an interview with a couple of passengers.
Both claimed the whole incident should have been handled much better by Virgin staff than it was.
One person saying the only people in panic were those who are meant to help keep everyone calm.
Also seems that a number of injuries happened due to too many people going down the emergency 'chute' at the same time and with too high a frequency. This despite other passengers attempting to bring 'some common sense' to those staff.

Hmm, lets see what transpires, but certainly appears to have caused some concern from passengers.

[RickyR]

They might be able to evacuate 300 young and fit pretend passengers rapidly in training, but the reality is that some much older and more confused passengers would have been going down that slide and then dawdling at the bottom, having difficulty getting up, worrying etc. Real life is always a bit different.

[fred]

Those slide sounds like fun to me!
Its the stuff that occurs before that might unsettle me somewhat!

[MarBell379]

I was on the flight, and am the Mark Bell (mis) quoted above. I didn't know anything was wring, although it did feel a bit wobbly on takeoff. We did not circle the airport before landing, that would have been stupid. We did circle over the solent for a bit, and the Isle of Wight needles were visible at least twice as we went round.
I also did not say that 'everyone' was panicking. There was one cabin crew member who was so high pitched she was incoherent, everyone else I could see was very well behaved, including the passengers, some of whom were visibly upset once off the plane. We were all evacuated (300+people) in approx 90 seconds, so all in all it was very well done. The injuries were unfortunate, especially as the whole thing now appears to have been a false alarm. I'm going by rumours on other forums here, but it's suspected that some badly packed dry ice set off smoke alarms!!
The whole thing caused me a 36 hr delay and meant I was only in the USA less than 48hrs before coming home again.

I'm bloody knackered now!

[Terpe]

Wow Mark, not something that usually happens.
I never experienced anything even close to that in over 30 years regular flying.
Sounds like a nightmare experience.

Interesting to hear you say how you were mis-quoted.
Also very interesting to learn that everyone was evacuated in only 90 seconds.

Glad your OK

[MarBell379]

Thanks Terpe.