Expert Explains Why Passengers Were Forced to Walk on Plane’s Wing

The FAA is investigating a frightening landing at Denver International Airport last night. Flames bursting from an American Airlines plane as the jet pulled up to the gate. This was the scene 178 people on board a Boeing 737. Fire and smoke surrounding engulfing that engine. Many were forced to evacuate by climbing onto a wing and sliding off on emergency slides.
Airport officials say 12 passengers were taken to a hospital with minor injuries. This flight was actually headed from Colorado Springs to Dallas Fort Worth, and had to be diverted to Denver after the pilots reported engine vibrations. CNN aviation correspondent Pete Benteen joins us now. Pete, another scary incident.
Yeah, it seems like they’re happening all the time in this dramatic video that keeps surfacing will be so key to investigators as they try to figure out exactly how this fire started and also how this evacuation took place, because we can see it’s a relatively chaotic scene with passengers evacuating the 737 using the emergency wing exits onto the left side of the wing there.
an interesting phenomena that we’re seeing, these incidents and evacuations taking place and people also taking video at the same time. But then this is happening at the same time as there’s a fire burning on the right side of the plane. The FAA says the right engine of the 737 800 caught on fire after this plane landed and was taxiing up to the gate.
But let’s sort of reset here with the narrative, because this initially happened about 20 minutes into the flight. This flight was on its way from Colorado Springs to Dallas Fort Worth, a pretty large hub for American Airlines. Presumably a lot of these passengers going on the connecting flights. And then that’s about the time that the pilots told the passengers that they were going to divert to Denver because of engine vibrations, the exact cause of that vibration right now. Still a bit of a mystery.
The landing took place okay, but the fire took place according to the FAA as this plane was taxiing in. And I want you to listen now to one of the passengers who was on board, who described a very confusing scene as passengers essentially began rushing and pushing their way out of the plane. Listen. The window started.
There’s flames out. Out of the window where I was looking out. Started bubbling like melting is really weird, and everybody’s kind of pushing to get out of the plane. I got out, on the wing and there wasn’t even, like, a slide or anything. Typically, when you evacuate onto the wing of a 737, the flaps have to be down.
The pilots have to do that to be able to slide off easily. that was not the case. in this instance. And now investigators will sort of look into this to figure out how this took place. And the big question now is, did this evacuation take place at the order of the captain and the flight crew, or did people just evacuate and take it into their own hands? Wow.
Pete, you also you mentioned a number of scary incidents. You also have an update, as a result of that fatal collision over the Potomac at, Reagan National Airport, there’s been some changes to helicopter traffic in that area. Just on Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued two urgent recommendations calling for the closure of the helicopter route that guns north south just east of Reagan National Airport that was in use at the time of this crash on January 29th, and to move the route to find an alternative.
The FAA now says today it is looking into that, and it is permanently closing that helicopter route, at least for the foreseeable future. So a lot of big changes here. The issue has been they don’t want helicopters and airplanes to coexist near Reagan National Airport. That includes when President Trump lifts off from the white House and Marine One, which has led to a lot of cancellations and delays.
The FAA trying to get at the heart of that issue as well. Well, people, on seeing a busy man lately appreciate you, Brianna. This is just the latest scare in a string of recent incidents that have been plaguing the aviation industry. Joining us now, former Transportation Department inspector general Mary Schiavo.
Mary, just looking at this Denver incident, what kind of questions does this raise for you? Well, I have questions about how how this happened. Was this at all related to prior, what’s called uncontained engine failures on this make and model of engine? People remember a southwest flight back in 2018 where a similar plane and similar engine had what’s called an uncontained engine.
Failures were parts came out of the engine, blew out a window and someone perished, lost their lives because of that. There was a current or there is a current what’s called an error in this directive, which is an order from the FAA to inspect and replace certain parts on the engine, seals, certain sand blades in the jet engine, of course, the engine consists of lots of of little sand blades and throwing even one of them, if even one came off, it could cause vibration and and and out of balance situation.
And so they will focus on the engine but also on the evacuation and why it went to the gate. It didn’t start right away, and that standing on the wing may not have been a bad idea, because you’ll see in the pictures it looked like whatever was leaking from the engine and it could be oil. It doesn’t necessarily, wouldn’t necessarily be jet fuel, it could be oil.
But that was burning on the tarmac and the passengers couldn’t descend into a fire on the tarmac because then they’d be, you know, right into the fire themselves. So there are lots of things for the NTSB and many other people who are questioning what happened. So, you know, it feels like these incidents are happening more and more.
Of course, we also focus more on these things. when you have a incident like what happened at DCA here recently, it are these happening more? You know, we think of the Canada, crash, of course DCA or is it just how it feels? And know that this year that we have had a lot of aviation accidents. So at least speaking for this year we have had more.
And the safety statistics for this year will be bad. Already they have topped the 20 year, list. We have not had this many casualties in accidents in, a short period, literally for 20 years. So this year the statistics are bad. But what is going to be difficult for the NTSB and everyone else? Secretary of transportation trying to fix the problem is each one of these accidents has had a different cause.
a lot of times. What the f? Well, what the, Federal Aviation is supposed to do is supposed to look at trends and troubleshoot and figure out what is going wrong and how can we stop it. And as Pete just mentioned, when when he was speaking, know couple minutes before by the Department of Transportation finding out what a dangerous situation DCA was.
And we learned that they had something like 15,000 near-misses, with or loss of separation, rather with aircraft and helicopters in the three years before the disaster, they took action, as Pete just said today, to stop that and are also looking at other airports. So looking at the trends is very important. And so here I think the trend they will be looking at is on this engine.
And then also tangentially on the evacuation. How could it be better. and fortunately I say everyone was saved. And what should they do differently next time. But I think the engine will get the focus and and uncontained engine failure where it spews out shrapnel and there’s leaks and fires is a very dangerous situation.
It can cause a loss of plane or loss of life. Yeah. Mary Schiavo, always great to get your insights there. Thank you so much for that. Oh, no no no no no no. sorry. Sorry. Uncle Charlie, 48 engine fire copy. And a Charlie 48. fire personnel is responding as soon as the plane landed. It was very abrupt landing. Everyone started screaming, and you heard fire.
There’s flames up out of the window where I was looking out. Started bubbling like melting is really weird. And everybody’s kind of pushing to get out of the plane. Let’s go live now to CNN aviation analyst and science correspondent for PBS NewsHour, miles O’Brien. Miles, it’s interesting, if you go back and listen to the correspondence between the plane and air traffic control.
Initially, the pilot was very calm, saying, look, we just have, you know, engine vibration here. This doesn’t seem to be, you know, an emergency. And then fast forward a little bit later and it was Mayday, mayday. Walk us through how this could have happened. I it’s a sequence of events that is a bit murky, Pamela.
And lots of questions are raised by it. with an engine problem and a landing and a fire. Why did that aircraft taxi to the terminal and the gate? Why wasn’t there an immediate evacuation ordered by the flight crew? is it possible they were unaware of the fire until they were closer to the gate? That’s an interesting and important question to answer.
and then, of course, what you saw was, rather chaotic, evacuation at that aircraft, people on the wing of the aircraft in that scenario, was that something that the crew commanded, or were people at the exit doors? Did they do that on their own initiative out of, concern? Obviously they did at least evacuate on the left side of the plane.
The plane that wasn’t the side that wasn’t on fire. But then on top of that, there’s a door open on the right side, the rear right side door, which is the side of an aircraft that you’re not supposed to evacuate from because it was the side on fire. And so there’s a lot of questions about the the decisions, the sequence of events and how this chaotic evacuation occurred, how unusual are engine vibrations.
And then leading to a fire like this, you know, they happen. And this particular engine is one of the most widely used engines in the world. It’s, built by General Electric. in a, partnership with a French company called Safran. you know, in 2018 on a 737 operated by Southwest Airlines. It was an explosive, decon explosion, which caused a piece of shrapnel to go into the fuselage and end up killing a passenger.
So occasionally these things do happen. and, you know, when you consider, all the stress and pressure said a jet engine is under there going to happen over millions of hours of of time. But, a question like this, the questions like this are really, how that, emergency response occurred, the sequence of events and what the crew told the passengers to do.