According to airport sources, the No BA-138 bound for London had gathered top speed and was about to take off at 1.30 am when the accident took place. The aircraft came to a grinding halt just metres from the western end of the main 09-27 runway.

``It was a hair-raising experience. The plane was just about to take off, when we heard a loud blast. Before we could realise what had happened, we were nearly flung out of our seats as the pilots applied emergency breaks to abort takeoff,'' Rohit Upadhayay, a passenger, said. He criticised the airline crew, who he said were not forthcoming with any details as to what had happened. ``We were just told the aircraft had suffered a technical snag, none of our questions were replied to,'' he added.

Another passenger,Mrs Undre, also agreed with Upadhayay's views. ``The airline crew made us wait inside the aircraft for over an hour before we were evacuated. We demanded the supervisor or some higher official speak to us, but they did not budge,'' she said.

Another passenger said the atmosphere inside the cabin had become ``terribly hot'' due to the application of emergency breaks which caused the engines to heat up.

All passengers have been sent to nearby hotels including Airport and Juhu Centaur and Sea Princess and will be flown to London tomorrow afternoon.``It seems one of the tyres had some pressure problems, and when it burst, its impact caused all the other tyres to burst in quick succession,'' sources said, complimenting the commander for controlling the Jumbo at such high speed and not allowing it to shoot off the runway. The runway was closed for operations for about three hours, affecting nearly 30 flights.

Flights were diverted on the alternative smaller runway 14-32 during this time. Operations on themain runway started later when the aircraft was moved to another place.

Some policemen were seen guarding the aircraft in the afternoon. The airline and AAI personnel were also seen unloading cargo from the stranded aircraft.