July 25, 2020: Ethiopian Airlines has issued an update on its LinkedIn page on B777-200F fire incident which occurred on July 22 at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, China.

“Although proper investigation has been started by the country of occurrence and the country of registration and operation, preliminary information revealed that in the final preparation for taxi out, fire was detected in the main deck,” said the statement.

Meanwhile, it is said that the fire spread in the cabin until the handling company and the airport emergency unit arrived at the scene of the incident. The fire damaged the upper structure of the aircraft before it was brought under control by the airport emergency services.

The last flight of the aircraft was from Brussels Airport. The aircraft was on a regular scheduled cargo service from Shanghai to Sao Paulo - Santiago via Addis Ababa.

The brand new aircraft was acquired by Ethiopian in October 2014. It had a clean maintenance log book since previous flights.

A team of experts has been dispatched from Addis Ababa to assist Chinese authorities in the investigation.