A Boeing 737-800 passenger plane of Taiwan's China Airlines exploded and burst into flames after it parked at Okinawa's Naha airport Monday morning. Miraculously all 157 passengers and eight crew members escaped unhurt moments before the airline burst into a fireball.
If the evacuation had been delayed one or two minutes, or if the explosions had occurred one or two minutes earlier, the incident could have been disastrous, killing a large number of people. One bright spot in the incident is that a regulation concerning passenger and crew evacuation worked as desired and saved their lives. The regulation stipulates a sufficient number of emergency doors and their location at appropriate locations so that everyone in a passenger plane can evacuate within 1 1/2 minutes in the event of an emergency.
A fuel leak apparently caused the fire and explosions. Boeing Aircraft Co., the maker of the plane, has announced that the fire was not the result of manufacturing error. Three Japanese airlines that are flying 23 Boeing 737-800s also have reported that their inspections of the planes' fuel supply systems have disclosed no abnormalities.
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