A fire alarm forced a Kingfisher Airlines flight to make a priority landing at Kolkata airport on Tuesday evening. Inspection, however, revealed the alarm was false. Jose P Vidad, the commander of the Guwahati-Kolkata-Hyderabad-Bangalore flight first spotted the alarm in the cockpit control panel when the aircraft was 125 km from the city. The alarm indicated a fire in the cargo belly. The pilot immediately contacted Kolkata air traffic control (ATC) and sought priority landing. At the airport, emergency was declared at 5.15 pm and the runway made available for landing.
All emergency facilities including fire brigade and ambulance were rolled out. The flight, however, landed safely 10 minutes later. The emergency was called off at 5.35 p.m. after the ATC confirmed that all 170 passengers and six crew members on board were safe. "The pilot received a smoke warning alert from a cargo compartment. On inspection immediately after landing, it was found that there was no evidence of fire or smoke in the cargo hold," said Kingfisher spokesperson.
Engineers said the alarm might have been triggered by a mechanical fault in the fire alarm panel of the Airbus A 320 aircraft. "It was a false warning. After primary investigation, we have released the aircraft. A detailed inspection will take place either at Bangalore or at the aircraft base in Delhi," said a DGCA official. "No flights were scheduled to take off or land during that period. Hence, there was no disruption in movement of aircrafts," said airport director R Srinivasan. The flight finally took off for Bangalore via Hyderabad two hours later.
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