FORT LAUDERDALE-HOLLYWOOD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FLA. (WSVN) – Hours after their flight made an emergency landing in another state, JetBlue passengers finally arrived safely to Fort Lauderdale.
Smoke in the cockpit of a JetBlue plane prompted an emergency landing in South Carolina, Friday morning.
The plane landed in Charleston, South Carolina, and passengers were evacuated via the plane’s emergency chutes. The plane remained at the Charleston airport while crews investigated the smoke.
Passengers who spoke to 7News said the smoke had an “electrical” smell.
“I told my daughter [the smoke] was from cooking something, but it didn’t really smell like that. It smelled like an electrical fire,” said passenger Lisa Wrobel.
“It started smelling like this electrical, you know, industrial kind of fiery smell,” said one passenger via phone. “You know, there was smoke, but it wasn’t, like, a lot.”
Passengers said the crews were calm during the landing.
“You could smell a little smoke, then there was a little more smoke, and then they acknowledged there was smoke in the cabin,” said passenger Lisa Vonstuelpnagel.
Another passenger said, “There was no freak out, there was no Hollywood screaming. There were a bunch of people praying and whatnot, so they opened the chutes, and that was extremely orderly,”
“The flight attendants were like ‘Out, out,’ directing you, telling you get your feet up, and it was like ‘wee,’ we got to go down a slide,” he said.
Passengers said they went from a code yellow to a code red, but the crew remained calm and collected.
Wrobel said, “It was as good as it could be. The staff at JetBlue treated us beautifully. If there was such thing as a perfect emergency then it was a perfect emergency.”
According to Wrobel, staff confirmed the incident was an “…unidentified source of smoke, that they could not identify it.”
“They said, ‘We are going to take an emergency landing,’” she said. “We became nervous, did the brace. They told us how to do the brace,” said the passenger.
Passenger Giuliana Camperari was shaken after the flight. “I’m still shaking. I couldn’t believe it, you know. It was terrible,” she said.
Passengers were then placed on another flight and arrived to Fort Lauderdale about seven hours behind schedule.
JetBlue is currently investigating the cause of the smoke
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