Two passengers were injured after a United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing when a possible fire was detected on board.
United Flight 32 was en route from Tokyo-Narita, Japan, to Cebu, Philippines, when flames were reportedly detected in the aircraft’s cargo hold just 50 minutes into the trip.
The Boeing 737-800, carrying 142 passengers and crew, was still over Japan when pilots turned the plane back and landed safely at Kansai International Airport near Osaka at around 6am ET.
Emergency crews and fire trucks met the aircraft on the runway. There was no visible damage to the outside of the plane.
United said two passengers were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries after the evacuation.
In a statement, the airline said: “United Airlines flight 32 from Tokyo-Narita to Cebu, Philippines, diverted to Osaka due to an indication of potential fire in the cargo hold. The aircraft landed safely and passengers deplaned via slides.”
However, after an inspection, United said they could not find any evidence that a fire had actually broken out.
Passengers were seen evacuating the aircraft using inflatable emergency slides. One traveller told Newsweek: “I was a little unsettled, wondering what the reason was, but there was no sign of confusion.
“After the emergency landing, we were instructed to evacuate, which made me panic. It took about five minutes to evacuate.”
The cause of the fire warning remains unclear, and United has not provided details on how the two passengers were injured.
United, headquartered in Chicago, is one of the world’s largest airlines, flying both domestic US routes and international destinations. In 2024, the airline carried a record 173.6 million passengers, up about five per cent on the year before.
However, it has faced a string of safety and operational incidents in recent years.
In August, a failure in United’s weight and balance computer system grounded flights across the US for several hours, causing hundreds of delays and cancellations.
In May, two United passenger planes clipped wings while taxiing at San Francisco International Airport.
And in 2024, five separate accidents involving United flights occurred in a single week. In one case, a plane’s engine caught fire after sucking in bubble wrap mid-flight; in another, a passenger jet lost a tire shortly after takeoff, forcing an emergency landing.
