Fruit forces Paris flight into emergency landing

The Boeing 747-400 was travelling from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to Paris on Sunday, when an alarm sounded, alerting the crew to a potential fire in the cargo hold.

Pilots decided to the best course of action was to declare an emergency and seek permission to divert the plane, carrying 142 passengers and 12 crew to the nearest airport.

In the end it made an emergency landing at Shannon airport on the west coast of Ireland, where it was met by emergency fire crews.

But after an inspection thankfully there was no fire to report.

After initial reports suggested the alarm had gone off because of the heat from a shipment of chilli peppers, Air France told The Local it was actually triggered by a batch of fruit and veg.

“Maybe there were some chilli peppers among the shipment but the alarm was set off because of the gas released by the fruit and veg,” the spokeswoman told Air France.

After a delay of several hours Air France flew another plane to Shannon to bring the passengers and crew back to Paris.

According to the Irish Independent It was the third time this year that a shipment of organic material has set off an aircraft alarm and forced a flight to divert to Shannon Airport.