QANTAS last night blamed a faulty fire sensor in the hold of one of its jets for causing an incident in which nine passengers were hurt evacuating an Airbus A330-300 in Osaka.

Passengers told The Australian of panic as the 178 passengers and 13 crew on board the 14-month-old Airbus A330-300 were hustled on to inflatable safety ramps at Osaka’s Kansai airport at 1am local time (2am AEST) yesterday.

He said a Qantas aircraft would be sent to Osaka as early as today so passengers could continue their journeys. Japanese safety investigators had quarantined the aircraft and Qantas engineers were en route to assist in investigating the incident.

QANTAS last night blamed a faulty fire sensor in the hold of one of its jets for causing an incident in which nine passengers were hurt evacuating an Airbus A330-300 in Osaka.

Passengers told The Australian of panic as the 178 passengers and 13 crew on board the 14-month-old Airbus A330-300 were hustled on to inflatable safety ramps at Osaka’s Kansai airport at 1am local time (2am AEST) yesterday.

Flight QF70, on its way to Perth from Tokyo’s Narita Airport, had turned back because a warning light indicated there was a fire in the cargo hold.

All nine injured passengers were taken to hospital in Osaka — with all but one, a Japanese woman who suffered a fractured pelvis – – released by early yesterday.

The flight was about 90 minutes out of Narita and “well over the ocean” when the skipper told passengers he had turned back, said Greg Pidgeon, 36, a business analyst from Perth.

“He said there had been a warning light indicating a fire,” said Mr Pidgeon.

“Fifteen or 20 minutes later he told the crew to go through emergency evacuation procedures with the passengers. It was at this stage that people began to get very nervous.”

About 15 minutes later the captain was on the PA system again, saying he had contacted the plane’s manufacturer, Airbus Industrie, and asked about the light, Mr Pidgeon said.

“The captain announced that he had made a phone call to a representative from Airbus who suggested the problem was not a real problem, just a faulty light. The landing was fairly routine but the plane, instead of taxiing, stayed out on the runway.”

After the landing “all of a sudden all power went out, all the lights went off. Then the crew announced we should evacuate the plane”. That was when panic began to set in, he said. “Not knowing exactly what was going on, I was under the impression one of the engines was going to explode. When I got down I just bolted 300m from the plane.”

Mr Pidgeon said the Qantas cabin crew did a “fantastic job”.

Qantas executive general manager for engineering and maintenance David Cox said just after touchdown a fire officer at Osaka airport said he had “observed some smoke from the hold”.

“The captain gave the order to evacuate the aircraft,” Mr Cox said. He described the injuries as “unfortunate”.

“The evacuation systems are designed to get people off, in fact, within 90 seconds, and that means they are going to go down those slides very, very quickly,” he said. “And there is the risk of minor injuries.”

Mr Cox said it was believed the injuries happened “in that process of going down the slide”.

Mr Cox said it was “highly unlikely” the captain had spoken to Airbus directly, but would have been getting advice from Qantas’s crisis team.

He said a Qantas aircraft would be sent to Osaka as early as today so passengers could continue their journeys. Japanese safety investigators had quarantined the aircraft and Qantas engineers were en route to assist in investigating the incident.

Asked if terrorism were suspected, Mr Cox said: “Absolutely not. It was a perfectly normal issue with the fire sensor system. In that situation you’re not going to muck around or take any risks when there’s the risk of fire.”

Mr Cox ruled out grounding the airline’s fleet of A330s.

“There is no question of any action as drastic as that.” He said there could have been a problem with smoke sensors in the hold “or some sort of wiring fault”.

Dennis Hicks, 30, a sales manager from Perth, said some passengers were “clearly nervous”.

“You could see the nerves on their faces, they were getting a bit teary,” he said. “The captain was very calm. There was nothing in his voice to suggest we were in any danger.”

Also published in The Advertiser.