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Tibet Airlines says all 113 passengers and 9 crew on board the plane that caught fire were safely evacuated.
A Chinese passenger jet has caught fire after veering off the runway in China’s Chongqing, leaving dozens of people with what were said to be minor injuries.
The incident happened on Thursday as the Tibet Airlines plane was preparing to take off at 8:09 am local time (00:09 GMT).
The Airbus A319-115 jet, carrying 113 passengers and nine crew, was headed from the southwestern city of Chongqing to Tibet’s Nyingchi.
Everyone on board was safely evacuated, the airline said in a statement.
“In the process of taking off, the flight crew discovered an abnormality with the aircraft and stopped the takeoff, after which the aircraft left the runway,” the statement said.
“The injured passengers were all lightly injured, and have been sent to hospital for treatment,” it added.
In a separate statement, the Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport said about 40 passengers with minor injuries were sent to hospital.
It said Flight TV9833 deviated from the runway during takeoff and that “the left side of the aircraft’s nose caught fire”.
Operations at the airport have since returned to normal and “the cause of the accident is being investigated,” it added.
The incident follows the crash of a Chinese Eastern Boeing 737-800 in southeastern China on March 21, in which all 132 people on board were killed.
That accident, in which the plane went into a sudden nosedive and slammed into the ground in a mountainous area, remains under investigation.
Two flight recorders, or “black boxes”, were recovered from that crash and are being analyzed in the United States.
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