[Courtesy of Asiana Airlines]
An Asiana Airlines plane with 127 passengers aboard has made an emergency landing on South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju due to a smoke alarm during its flight to the Philippines from an international airport in Incheon, company officials said Thursday.
The emergency landing came on Wednesday just an hour after Asiana's A321 plane took off from Incheon. This is the second time in two weeks that Asiana has reported similar problems in the air. Asiana's A380 passenger jet with 358 passengers aboard made a U-turn to Los Angeles due to a smoke alarm on September 27.
"Yesterday's incident was attributable to the same problem we experienced last week," an Asiana spokesman told Aju News . "An error message was shown in flight. There was no visible fire, but crew members followed their flight manual and made an emergency landing for the safety of passengers."
Asiana provided a replacement plane for the passengers while the A321 plane was grounded in Jeju for an investigation, though Asiana officials cited a possible malfunction in the smoke detecting system.
The country's second-largest airline company experienced a similar problem on September 27 when Asiana's A380 plane with 358 passengers aboard made a U-turn to Los Angeles due to a smoke alarm.
Asiana has been punished in the United States and South Korea for a number of accidents. In 2013, Asiana's Boeing-777 crashed into the runway of San Francisco International Airport, killing three people and leaving 181 others injured.
In April 2014, Asiana's Boeing-767 pilots noticed an alarm notifying them of a malfunctioning engine but kept heading for its destination, Saipan. 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
