ANA plane makes emergency landing due to smoke

HIROSHIMA, June 1 (Kyodo) - An All Nippon Airways (ANA) passenger plane bound for Fukuoka from Tokyo's Haneda airport made an emergency landing in Hiroshima on Sunday after pilots detected smoke in the cockpit, ANA officials said.

Flight 245, with 139 passengers and crew aboard, landed at Hiroshima airport at 10:26 a.m., the officials said, adding no one was injured.

After the Boeing 777 aircraft took off from Haneda around 9:15 a.m., cabin attendants saw white smoke near a rear door of the passenger cabin, the officials said.

The smoke disappeared shortly after, so the flight continued until pilots smelled smoke in the cockpit after 10 a.m., prompting the captain to seek an emergency landing at 10:22 a.m.

Hiroshima airport officials said they did not see smoke when the plane landed.

The airline is investigating the cause of the smoke, the ANA officials said.

The passengers later traveled to Fukuoka on a Shinkansen bullet train, the officials said.

CD this incident is very interesting. It's hard to miss that the crew decided to continue the flight despite the fact that they had seen smoke. It took them over an hour from that time to decide to land because they decided to ignore the smoke because it *seemed* to go away. Very frightening. You would think that after the tragedy of sr111 pilots would be very cautious of ignoring any sign of smoke even if it would seem to disappear. Thanks for posting that. Airlines really need to have a firm policy regarding smoke incidents- a policy to land ASAP.

Barbara