The fuselage of the BA Boeing shows smoke damage. Credit:AP The Boeing 777-200 series can accommodate 275 passengers when fully loaded. The plane had just 159 passengers and 13 crew members aboard. The passengers were evacuated using the plane's emergency slides and were returned to the terminal by bus. Two people suffered minor injuries.

Firefighters enter a plane that caught fire at McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas. Credit:AP Virgin Australia uses the Boeing 777-300 for its long haul flights. It has said it will release a statement soon on its response to the Las Vegas plane fire.



McCarran International Airport has four runways; the fire has forced the closure of one of the four. "Flight operations continue on the airport's other three runways," a statement from the airport said. Passengers run to safety

Video taken on board a grounded aircraft on an adjacent runway captures that flight's captain advising his passengers "There is obviously an issue going on on the tarmac." The footage shows a long line of passengers running from the burning aircraft, after using the plane's evacuation slides. The pilot of the observing aircraft commends the cabin crew of the burning plane. "The flight attendants are doing a really good job of getting them off," he says. Despite the relatively tiny size of Las Vegas, its popularity as a holiday destination means that McCarran International Airport is America's ninth busiest.

More than 30 airlines use the airport daily. Video footage posted to social media shows fire equipment sending plumes of water across the burning aircraft fuselage. According to McCarran Airport's official Twitter feed, which it is using to post media updates, the fire has been extinguished. An airport spokesman said the crew of the aircraft declared the emergency at 4.13pm local time. Flames were visible to the airport's control tower at 4.14pm and the Aircraft Rescue and Fire-Fighting (ARFF) unit was immediately deployed.

The ARFF deals with the "hazard mitigation, evacuation and possible rescue of passengers and crew" in ground emergencies at airports. The airport said the passengers were fully evacuated from the burning airliner by 4.18pm. Some photographs of evacuating passengers posted to social media show them pulling cabin baggage, in breach of standard aircraft evacuation procedure, which requires all cabin baggage be left behind. Plane came to crashing halt: journalist

A journalist for British newspaper The Guardian, Jacob Steinberg, was on board the aircraft. Steinberg said via his social media account that the plane came to a "crashing halt" during take-off and there was an immediate smell of smoke in the cabin. Passengers were initially told to remain in their seats, he said, but then came a "shout of evacuate". "[We] could smell and see smoke but was on [the] other side of plane," he said. Steinberg was presumably seated on the right side of the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane's left engine caught fire.

Steinberg also quoted another passenger saying that the fire had "melted a couple of windows". The plane's rear door was opened first, Steinberg said, and the slide inflated. But smoke began to pour into the cabin resulting in a "mad dash" to the front by passengers. "A lot of panic," he said. The passengers were evacuated on foot but loaded on to buses.

They were returned to the gate, but held there because they had already cleared outgoing customs. In order to re-enter the terminal, under US law, they would have to processed again as arriving passengers. Steinberg said the British Airways crew have addressed the evacuated passengers at the gate. When the airliner's pilot got up to speak, Steinberg said, the passengers applauded him.

The pilot described the incident as a "catastrophic failure of the engine". "Ground stop" for US airports According to McCarran International Airport, the FAA issued a "ground stop" for a number of airports in the western United States. This means inbound aircraft are slowed or stopped. It also slows or stops take-offs at airports sending flights to an airport affected by a ground stop. The affected airports are Mineta San Jose International Airport and San Francisco International Airport in California; Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona; Salt Lake City International Airport in Utah; Denver International Airport in Colorado; Albuquerque International Sunport in New Mexico; and Boise Airport in Idaho.

The FAA later expanded the ground stop to include inbound aircraft from Canada. Five Canadian airports are affected; they are Edmonton International Airport and Calgary International Airport in Alberta; and Victoria International Airport, Kelowna International Airport and Vancouver International Airport in British Columbia. The ground stop appears to affect aircraft from those airports bound for McCarran. The note from McCarran did not clarify the reason for the ground stop, but that procedure is normally used to slow the flow of aircraft to prevent congestion, either in the air, or at affected airports. The FAA's website says ground stops are implemented when "air traffic control is unable to safely accommodate additional aircraft in the system".

The most likely cause is that the disruption caused by the incident at McCarran would require some time for air-traffic controllers to manage, as delayed outbound aircraft and diverted incoming aircraft are rescheduled. The FAA has since lifted the ground stop on some airports, but has not clarified which ones. Second plane fire It is the second time in recent years that a British Airways has been hit with plane fire controversy. In 2013, a flight from London to Oslo was forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow with one engine damaged and another on fire after fatigued engineers worked on the wrong aircraft, London's Telegraph reported.

An investigation by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch said doors on both engines had been left unlatched during maintenance and two technicians had failed to notice they were working on the wrong aircraft. The AIIB's report, released in July, said an analysis of the workers' working time records showed a two in five risk the workers were experiencing high levels of sleepiness on the shift in question. All passengers were safely evacuated, although the AIIB said cabin crew in that case had failed to act on the concern of alarmed passengers about the state of the plane. - with Catherine Armitage Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the Oslo incident took place in 2015.