[Courtesy of Asiana Airlines]
Asiana's Airlines' A380 passenger jet with 358 passengers aboard has made a U-turn to Los Angeles due to a smoke alarm in the cargo hold during its flight to South Korea's main airport in Incheon, company officials said Wednesday.
The country's second-largest airline said the plane flew back three hours after it took off at 12:10 pm (local time) Tuesday. A ground safety check was conducted in Los Angeles but engineers and aviation officials failed to find any signs of fire or smoke, indicating the alarm might have malfunctioned.
Asiana said that if no further problems are found, the plane will take off at around 7:30am, Thursday (local time).
Asiana has been punished in the United States and South Korea for a number of accidents. In 2011, Asiana's Boeing-747 freight cargo plane crashed near the southern resort island of Jeju. On July 7, 2013, Asiana's Boeing-777 crashed into the runway of San Francisco International Airport, killing three people and leaving 181 others injured.
Asiana also experienced problems mid-air in April 2014 when its Boeing-767 pilots noticed an alarm notifying them of a malfunctioning engine but kept heading for its destination, Saipan, for almost four hours. As a result, Asiana's flight route from Incheon to Saipan was banned for a week. The captain's flight license was suspended for 30 days.
In April last year, an Asiana A310 plane ran off a runway while landing at Japan's Hiroshima International Airport, crashed into a communications tower and skidded off for another 1,100 meters until it came to a stop. The accident left 27 people slightly injured.
Aju News Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
