If Your Plane’s Wing Catches Fire, Do This.

If you’re sitting in the window seat and flames start to appear to be coming off the wings of your Airbus A320, is the correct thing to do:

  1. Inform a flight attendant
  2. Scream
  3. Pray
  4. Take out your cell phone and start shooting video?

Number 4 is of course correct. Although I would venture to add that if you’re uncertain what it means, it can’t hurt to do number 1 as well.

A passenger onboard three year old airline VivaColombia flight from Bogota to Medellin took this video.

(HT: Joel G.)


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Is that incomplete combustion in both engines? Never seen that before. It doesn’t look like they’re on fire, as the flames are so intermittent and seem to be contained in the exhaust plume. Odd.

  2. Oh lord click bait …

    The “wing” isn’t on fire. That’s a compressor stall, probably because they sucked up a bird.

    For someone that travels as much as you do one would hope you’d turn down the sensationalism on “wings on fire” crap. Also, I can’t believe you’ve never been on a flight that had a compressor stall given how much you fly.

    I suppose if you had you’d go with:

    5. Write click bait blog post about fairly common airplane malfunction

    @Gary Petersen You can only see one engine. It’s an A320.

  3. Thanks, Scott. The outboard flashes must be a reflection off of the flap track. I didn’t catch that.

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