A ground vehicle has caught fire near a British Airways plane parked at Heathrow Terminal 5.
Flames and a huge black cloud of smoke was seen rising from a set of mobile stairs attached to an A320, engulfing its tail.
The thick column was pictured so high that it could be seen from behind several other terminal buildings at the busy airport.
Footage showed firefighters battling to put out the blaze with water jets just yards from the terminal building.
A set of aircraft caught fire at Heathrow Terminal 5 this evening, engulfing the tail of an aircraft
No passengers were onboard the British Airways plane at the time, Heathrow confirmed
Heathrow Airport confirmed that no passengers were onboard the aircraft at the time of the incident.
A spokesperson said that the airport fire service had attended to the incident promptly.
The aircraft affected, registered as G-EUYO, last flew in to Heathrow from Athens at 5.14pm.
A British Airways spokesperson said: ‘Emergency services quickly extinguished a small fire of a third party ground vehicle. No customers were impacted and there were no injuries.’