Mumbai, June 3: Passengers on Air India aircraft AI 984 which was arriving from Dubai to Mumbai experienced the worst 15 minutes when smoke was detected in one of the washrooms. The flight was just scheduled to land in Mumbai when all the passengers had to fasten their seat belts and given out safety instructions. But the flight landed safely on its scheduled time at 4.15 am. But officials found out that one of the passengers lit a cigarette and dropped it in the dustbin. The contents within flared up causing a smoke and the resulting panic.

Air India spokesperson commented saying, "It is the ground security that gives clearance. Air India has raised the matter with the concerned authorities to investigate the incident and are looking into the matter." On detecting the smoke the crew members headed towards the washroom and found it was the dustbin that had caught fire.

Although there was not an untoward incident, it created a state of panic among the passengers. A fire on the plane is a situation too worse to think of. Although lighters are not even allowed on the plane, it shows some irresponsibility from the ground staff which must have missed checking correctly. A passenger who was flying from Canada had switched into this flight from Dubai. He was quoted raising the same concern. He said to a newspaper daily, "Though the crew members had doused the fire, we were all tensed after learning about the fire. The authorities need to investigate how the passenger managed to get a lighter on to the flight." This was clearly not a small matter, in case the fire had escalated, it would put lives in danger. All the passengers were thus made to wait for about an hour, to find out which of the passengers had done smoked in the washroom. The passenger responsible was then handed over to the Sahar police.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 03, 2018 04:28 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).