Officials from the island of Bali in Indonesia reported that “Six people were injured after jumping from a plane that was about to take off because they thought there was a fire ‘.

Actually there was an engine failure. The left engine of the 737-400 aircraft suddenly produced smoke after it took off. The smoke caused panic on board, where three of the passengers opened the craft’s emergency exit door and jumped to the ground from a height of 2 meters.

Heru Legowo, general manager of the PT Angkasa Pura I airport management company, explained that the accident occurred when the aircraft started the engine using its engine auxiliary power unit (APU).

The pilot and copilot tried to restart the engine with the Ground Power Unit and Gas Turbine Compressor (GTC), “but, one of the passengers shouted loudly when they saw smoke emerging from the plane’s engine,” Legowo said.

Batavia Air were carrying 148 passengers and six cabin crew on the flight.

“Actually, it was not a fire. The smoke came out as fuel residue from the previous flight,” Legowo said.

Nothing caught fire, please get this straight,” said the PR Manager of Batavia Air, Eddy Haryanto, when contacted by Kompas.com, Jakarta. According to Eddy, based on the report from Denpasar, there was only smoke from left engine of the plane, but no fire.

“What happened was the plane’s engine was being started, so there was combustion and smoke came out. That’s natural.”

Eddy said that the problem occured when the 148 passengers aboard panicked, screamed, and rushed to the emergency exit. “The flight attendant couldn’t stop them. They got out through the slide, now the slide has expanded and all the passengers are out.”

He also stated that currently hundreds of passengers are still at the airport’s boarding room, and it hasn’t been determined whether there will be a change of plane or not. “The slide has expanded because the passengers got out, so I don’t know and it has to be confirmed first whether there will be a change of plane. But please get this straight: there was no fire.”