A British Airways plane was forced to make an emergency landing and evacuate on the runway at London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday after a technical fault caused smoke to billow from one of its engines.
Flight BA762 departed Heathrow (LHR) for Oslo (OSL) at 8:16 a.m. but turned back to London and landed at 8:43 a.m. The twin-engine Airbus A319 carried five crew members and 75 passengers, all of whom exited the aircraft safely via emergency slides.
Heathrow temporarily closed both runways while emergency crews extinguished a fire on the aircraft. As a result, British Airways cancelled 193 flights and suspended all short-haul services to the United Kingdom, Europe and parts of North Africa through 4 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET).
The disruption came on a day the airline expected heavy travel for the UK bank holiday, with 128,000 passengers due to travel and more than 463,000 customers planned to be carried over the extended weekend. British Airways had scheduled about 116,000 passengers to fly on bank holiday Monday.
Heathrow Airport reported on its website that operations are now fully restored and returning to normal, while warning that some disruption may continue throughout the day. Passengers were advised to check flight status with their airline before traveling to the airport.
British Airways has opened a full investigation into what it described as an “engine technical fault.” The UK Department for Transport confirmed that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has been notified and a team was dispatched to the airport to examine the incident.