Firefighters respond to airport emergency by spraying wrong plane

The firefighters then turned their attention toward the correct plane, but the blunder caused a 10-hour delay for the aircraft that was sprayed by accident, according to AP.

Wasting no time, the people in the tower contacted the airport's fire department, which sent eight fire trucks screaming to the tarmac...where they proceeded to drive right past the plane that only minutes ago had appeared ready to burst into flames.

An airport in China's Fujian province had to be closed for 90 minutes after an embarrassing mix-up by firefighters responding to a fire alert from a plane.

The firemen then hosed the Fuzhou Airlines plane down with foam. The passengers on the Air China jet, on the other hand, were given hotel accommodations after the mistake delayed the plane's takeoff.

However, the Fuzhou Airlines plane of the same make had exhaust fumes coming from its tail, the airport explained in a statement.

Fuzhou Airlines confirmed on Saturday that foam mistakenly sprayed on one of its Boeing 737-800 passenger liners on Thursday damaged both its engines and would cost about 120 million yuan (HK$217 million) to replace them, The Paper.cn, a news portal based in Shanghai, reported.

It took two minutes before the control tower informed the firefighters of the error.

"All readings of the engines of the plane are normal and there is no impact on the safety of the aircraft", Air China said.

Some praised the timely and responsible action of the airport, some joked that the passengers and crew members on FU 6577 must have been surprised to it snow in Fuzhou, while others advised that it's time to train the firefighters to know the logos of different airlines.

In the aftermath of the fiasco, Fuzhou Changle International Airport issued a statement apologizing for the delayed flights.