My apologies for publishing a false story in the March 12^th website update.

The story 777 Engine Fire at Take Off was a fake as explained below.
Click on http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/fire01.asp

Snopes also has a search engine which you can use to look for an article which may be suspect. http://www.snopes.com/info/search/search.asp

I encourage each of you who send interesting information to me to check with Scopes for accuracy before sending.

Vern Nelson, Web Manager

Origins:   A blazing engine fire may be one of the most frightening sights one could experience on board an airliner, but the — despite the elaborate explanation accompanying the picture above — scariest thing about this photograph is what a poor job someone did of editing it. (One of the major tell-tale defects in this altered picture is that the flames from the putative engine fire aren't reflected in the shiny undersurface of the plane's fuselage, even though the engine's reflection is visible just below the red and white stripes under the "American" logo.)

If there were any doubts about the falsity of this photograph, the existence of the unaltered image put them to rest: