Aircraft Seriously Damaged, No Injuries Reported

The pilot and co-pilot aboard an ABX Air/Airborne Express Boeing 767 freighter escaped injury Saturday evening when the cockpit of the aircraft caught fire while parked at San Francisco International Airport.

The aircraft was parked in a hangar near a mail processing facility when the fire started just after 2200 Saturday evening.

According to Duty Manager Lilly Wang, people began pointing to heavy black smoke coming out of an area behind the cockpit. Neither the pilot or the co-pilot aboard were injured, though the co-pilot did go to the hospital.

According to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bruce Nelson, the hangar is located in a part of the airport "far away from regular traffic" though officials temporarily closed roads into the airport for about ten minutes while emergency crews responded to the scene.

The fire forced more than 100 people to evacuate from a nearby building as black smoke billowed into the air from the intense flames that seriously damaged the aircraft.

"You can actually see through the top of the aircraft. It spread all the way through," said Wang.

It took firefighters two hours to fully extinguish the blaze. Landings and takeoffs of passenger airplanes at the airport were not affected by the incident.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.flysfo.com