USA: The passengers on JetBlue Airways flight were left frightened after the airline was forced to conduct an emergency landing. The JetBlue flight was traveling from New York to San Diego on Saturday evening. It departed New York City at 4:17 pm.

However, about two hours into the flight, the pilots were alerted about the smoke or fire in the Cargo. The JetBlue flight 1189 rapidly descended from 36,000 feet to just 4,250 feet within less than 10 minutes. It made its emergency landing at Salina Regional Airport in Kansas. The plane landed safely around 6:30 PM.

The Salina Fire Department responded to the emergency immediately. It helped offload all 130 passengers and crew members onboard the flight.

Later upon inspection, it was determined that the alarm of smoke indication delivered to the pilots was a false indication.

“JetBlue flight 1189 diverted to Salina, Kansas, when the pilots received an alert that there might be smoke in the cargo hold, descending safely and landing without incident,” said a JetBlue Spokesperson.

Passenger shares experience

Marking the incident as an absolute plummet, a passenger on Reddit mentioned, “Pilot came to talk to us, said maybe after 90 minutes we landed. He said they didn’t know if there was any fire or smoke. But since than suppression system was deployed, that plane had to go to Boston to get checked out and can’t carry passengers. They left us.”

“They got us safely to the ground in the middle of nowhere Kansas. Tiny airport. Emergency exits on the tarmac. The airport is so small, they got the local bus school derivers to come and bring us from the plane to the terminal,” he further added.

While another passenger reported that, the pilot announced over the intercom that he saw an alert for smoke in the Cargo Bay.

While recalling his experience, noting that there were only 10 minutes for an emergency landing, he added, “Some passengers did report hearing a loud bang, too, and so we descended incredibly rapidly and landed in the extremely small airport in Salina.”

“So obviously everybody started to freak out, some people were crying. It was a little bit intense for a few minutes. The crew did a great job getting everybody organized extremely quickly and, once we were on the ground, everyone was just elated,” he further added.