Hundreds of gallons of fuel leak from Thomas Cook holiday jet seconds after take-off

By Nick Pisa

This is the dramatic moment when a packed British holiday jet had to make an emergency landing at an Italian airport as thousands of gallons of fuel leaked from a wing


This is the dramatic moment a packed British holiday jet had to make an emergency landing at an Italian airport as hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked from a wing.

The Boeing 757 belonging to holiday company Thomas Cook had just taken off from Turin's Caselle airport en route to Birmingham, with 231 passengers who had finished a half-term ski break.

But just minutes after leaving the tarmac the captain of flight 5739 radioed the control tower to alert them that he was dealing with a major emergency after he spotted the gushing fuel leak from the right hand wing.


As the dramatic sequence of photographs shows the fuel was leaking even as the undercarriage doors were closing and the trail it left is clearly evident against the azure sky


Officials on the ground had also noticed the situation and launched a major situation alert with fire engines lining the runway of the airport which was immediately closed.

As the dramatic sequence of photographs shows the fuel was leaking even as the undercarriage doors were closing and the trail it left is clearly evident against the azure sky.

Terrified passengers had also noticed the leak and the pilot informed them of the situation before reaching a safe altitude from where he then began his descent back to Caselle.

The amount of fuel leaking meant he would never have reached Birmingham and he kept the plane flying for half an hour to lighten it before safely touching down late yesterday (sun) afternoon.

Fire crews stood by as the Boeing 757 made its way to an isolated area of the airport where it was surrounded by emergency crews and the passengers safely taken off.


Fuel streams from the wing tank after one of the Boeing 757 seals failed moments after takeoff


Minutes after leaving the tarmac the captain of flight 5739 dramatically radioed the control tower to alert them that he was dealing with a major emergency after he spotted the gushing fuel leak


One passenger said:'The leak was immediately evident to those people sitting on the right hand side and so there was an immediate wave of alarm through the plane.

'The pilot immediately came on the tannoy and explained what was going on but some people were worried that because of the amount of fuel leaking there wasn't enough to get back to Turin.

'In the end the plane landed safely and the pilot and crew were fantastic there was a big cheer and a round of applause from everyone once we were back on the ground.'

Passengers on board were put up in a hotel overnight while engineers flew out to Turin from Birmingham to fix the problem which officials at the airport said was due to a faulty valve.


Jet alert: The Boeing 757 landed safely just half an hour after taking off


The runway had to close for two hours while it was cleaned of the fuel and several incoming flights, including another Thomas Cook flight from Manchester, were diverted to Milan airport.

The jet landed safely Birmingham this morning.

A Thomas Cook spokesman said: 'We can confirm that flight TCX127L to Birmingham yesterday experienced a fuel leak after take off from Turin airport, the pilot immediately landed the aircraft safely.

'An engineer was sent to Turin to repair the aircraft, and we'd like to apologise for the delay in the flight completing it's journey to Birmingham this morning.'


source: dailymail