Saturday December 20 at the end of the afternoon, flight AF7562 connecting Paris Orly to Ajaccio had to shorten its journey. Some passengers claim to have seen a wing in flames.
Big scare for the 172 passengers traveling from Paris to Corsica yesterday afternoon. Saturday December 20, Air France flight AF7562 connecting Paris Orly in Ajaccio had to be urgently diverted to Lyon, Air France declared Figaroconfirming information from Corsica morning.
The Airbus A320 took off from Paris Orly at 5:45 p.m. from Paris, but after around thirty minutes of flight, while it was flying over Clermont-Ferrand, Joëlle told RTL that she had seen “big flames » through the porthole. Placed at the front of the plane, window side, with her 8-year-old niece, she said she “screamed and screamed”. “I thought we were having fun on the floor” she testifies to RTL. Traumatized, she says she no longer wants to take a plane. Steven, another passenger, says he heard “a big boom” and felt “lots of vibrations”. “I thought it was a joke at first, then we saw that it was serious”he testifies at the microphone of RTL.
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“Precautionary measure”
Several passengers testified that a fire affected one of the plane’s engines, according to Morning run. «They asked to prepare for a dangerous landing, one of them tells Corsican mediaand to seize the emergency landing manual. A father was in tears, he was holding his children, it was excruciating. When we arrived, there were firefighters on the track.
“As a precautionary measure”, indicates Air France, it was decided to land the plane in Lyon. The 172 passengers then took a flight at 10:40 p.m. to Bastia, and were taken by bus to Ajaccio where they arrived at 3 a.m. There were no injuries. Air France indicates that, faced with “this technical problem”, “all precautionary measures have been taken for the safety of customers”.
What happened? “One of the engines was the victim of a pumping, that is to say it was choking, this caused a noise, vibrations, possibly an ejection of flames at the rear of the engine which caused the passenger to be upset,” deciphers Michel Polacco, aeronautics expert, on LCI. “These are things that happen because engines wear out. Today we can fly an engine for 40,000 to 50,000 hours without dismantling it. We do lots of checks regularly but there may be undetected wear phenomena.”
