Canoe

Sunday, July 23, 2000

747 engine catches fire after landing

MONTREAL (CP) -- No one on board a Boeing 747 was harmed Sunday evening when one of its engines caught fire as the airliner sputtered off the runway at Dorval airport.

The Royal Air Maroc plane, arriving from Morocco, rolled down the runway and crashed through the barrier of a zone under construction around 6 p.m.

Firefighters doused the blaze, which flared in one of the plane's four engines.

An investigation should determine whether the fire was the cause or result of the plane rolling off the runway, said Marie-Andree Bastien, a spokeswoman for the local airport authority.

Bastien could not say what caused the incident or how many passengers were on board.

"It was a 747, so I'm assuming there were quite a few people," she said. "But we don't have an exact number yet."

Officials from the federal Transportation Safety Board were expected to begin investigating late Sunday or Monday, Bastien said.

Some flights were subsequently delayed at the airport.

In 1994, a Royal Air Maroc captain switched off the automatic pilot and pointed his plane at the ground, killing all 44 people on board minutes after takeoff on a flight from Agadir to Casablanca.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 24, 2000