El Al flight makes emergency landing following smoke in cabin
El Al: Smell caused by short-circuit; no danger posed to crew, 144 passengers of flight 396 from Madrid.
By Zohar BlumenkrantzA brief state of emergency was ordered Ben Gurion International Airport on Monday after smoke was reported in the cabin of El AL flight 396 from Madrid.
Firefighting forces and rescue teams were hastened to the airport ahead of the plane's landing, and escorted the airliner - a Boeing 767 carrying 144 passengers - to the passenger terminal.
An El Al spokesperson reported that the smell of smoke was caused by an electrical short-circuit in the plane's air conditioning system.
An El Al press release said that "half an hour before the flight's landing the pilots reported a strange smell originating from the plane's air conditioning system. The pilots notified the control tower and the airport followed the procedures for such situations?there was no danger posed to the passengers, crew and aircraft."
This is the second such incident in under two months. A Transport Ministry investigation of a similar incident revealed that the flight crew failed to follow due protocol in evacuting passengers.
In the previous incident, which occurred in March, smoke filled the cabin of a Zurich-bound El Al Boeing 737 jetliner during takeoff, causing the takeoff to be aborted and the 120 passengers evacuated.
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Flight 396, from Madrid via Barcelona to Tel Aviv, uses Boeing 757 planes, not Boeing 767's. Boeing 757's have been more prone to incidents of cabin smoke than 767's. Reasons are unclear.
Shabat protects our people. The sooner we all realised that, the better we'd all be.
What are the aviation authorities doing in regard to the ALARMING number of serious incidents affecting El Al flights? If nothing is done to fundamentally change the way El Al is run, the risks of a new disaster will only grow. I would not feel safe today on an El Al flight, and I am by far not the only one feeling that way; this is for sure a great achievement for the El Al management... Instead of throwing money into stupid and unnecessary corporate image changes, all attention and efforts should be directed to the security and safety of each flight. Such a high occurence of serious incidents is an alarming signal that there's something going wrong in the maintenance system.
Government owned corporations tend to be inefficient and wasteful compared to privatized (both private and public) entities so I do not know if that if such a good idea. This also does not include the prospect that government owned companies are more susceptible to fraud and patronage. Government oversight of state owned companies tends to usually be poor.
EL AL should never have been privatised. Ever since we consistently hear of problems. The costs of security are so high and not flying on Shabbes adds to costs that they have to cut corners in order not to go bankrupt.
El Al needs to review why some many accidents have hit it as of late. Perhaps they have cut back on safety ever commercializing?