Passenger shares experience on flight as fuel poured out the wing

Some shocking images and a video were released recently of a flight on the runway at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport shows gallons of fuel gushing out as terrified passengers watch on.

The flight was supposed to take off at 9:30pm local time but didn’t take off until 2am with the flight landing at Bahrain International Airport in the early hours of the morning.

From there passengers travelled on to Doha in Qatar to catch another connecting flight on to Manchester Airport. The passengers arrived back in Manchester 13 hours later, following the incident on Saturday the 9th of December.

Blackburn based Ayub Chatti who was travelling to Manchester Airport via Bahrain was among the passengers that was stuck on the plane for over five hours.

Mr Chatti has complained about the experience to Gulf Air describing it as a nightmare.

He said: “It was shocking to see such scant disregard for the safety of passengers. Fuel was gushing out of the plane on to the runway and we were all sat in the plane.

We got told it was fuel and there was a problem and to sit tight. We waited in the plane for five hours just sitting there; we had to beg for water and food, eventually they gave us some snacks.”

He added: “You would think they would get passengers off. People were reasonably scared of seeing so much fuel spilling out. There were a few of us all travelling back to Blackburn and sitting on a plane for so long was just frustrating and tiring.”

Mr Chatti who paid £553 for a return ticket says that it took him six hours from Bharuch which is 200 miles north of Mumbai, to the airport and check in.

Mr Chatti said: “To have that wait after a long drive was already tiring. We got back to Manchester on the 10th and it was a full 13 hours after we were due back.

It forced me to go back to work a day later and caused all sorts of issues.”

He went onto say: “We contacted Gulf Air and they were said I was due back $118, which was below what someone else who on the same journey as me was offered.

Another passenger was offered $250. It just does not make any sense? We went through exactly the same journey so you would think the airline would pay people the same amount.”