Fire alarm on flight prompts evacuation

A fire alarm on a just-landed Shanghai-Fuzhou flight Wednesday triggered an emergency evacuation of its passengers, with four of them receiving minor injuries.

A fire alarm mistakenly went off in the cabin after the Xiamen Airline's Flight MF8542 from Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport had just landed at the Changle Airport in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, at around 3pm Wednesday. Crew members immediately ordered all the 121 passengers to vacate the aircraft.

"The fire alarm on the undercarriages was later confirmed as a false alarm," the airline said in a statement later Wednesday.

The emergency slides on both sides of the Boeing 737 aircraft were opened on the runway as passengers hurried to get out.

"Passengers were in panic during the evacuation made worse by heavy rainfall," one of the passengers said.

Some of them jumped off the plane and hurt themselves.

To make matters worse, one of the slides suddenly deflated and broke that injured passengers, he added. The flight attendants were the last to get out and were handicapped by the broken slide raft.

All the passengers and crew members ran down the runway towards the terminal building in heavy rain and strong wind.

Four passengers suffered slight bruises while jumping off the slide and were sent to nearby medical centers for treatment, a spokesperson with the airline said.

The crew members took the right decision to evacuate according to the emergency plan, he said.

The cause of the false alarm is still under investigation.