A JetBlue flight made an emergency landing in Kansas on Saturday after pilots were alerted to smoke in the cargo hold, but an inspection revealed it was a false alarm, the airline said.
The plane descended safely and landed “without incident,” the airline said in a statement.
Flight 1189 was traveling from New York to San Diego when the pilot announced that an alert was received for fire or smoke in the cargo hold area, according to passenger Seth Odell. The Salina Airport Authority said there were about 130 people on board.
“The pilot came on [the intercom] and let us know that he was seeing an alert for smoke in the cargo bay,” Odell said. “Some passengers did report hearing a loud bang, too, and so we descended incredibly rapidly and landed in the extremely small airport in Salina.”
Odell shared that there were only about 10 minutes between the pilot’s announcement and the subsequent landing in Kansas.
“So obviously everybody was starting to freak out,” Odell said. “Some people were crying. It was a little bit intense for a few minutes. Crew did a great job getting everybody organized extremely quickly, and obviously once we were on the ground, everyone was just elated.”