Cockpit Fire on United Flight Forces Emergency Landing at Dulles Airport

(May 17) -- Federal officials are investigating what started a fire that caused "substantial damage" to the cockpit of a United Airlines jet and forced the crew to make an emergency landing Sunday night outside Washington.

There were no reports of injuries among the 112 people on board the Boeing 757 en route to New York from Los Angeles, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr said today, adding that there was no indication of criminal activity.

United's Flight 27 landed at 9:36 p.m. Sunday at Dulles International Airport, he said. "Somewhere along the route, the crew declared an emergency," he said. "They reported smoke in the cockpit, and subsequently we have confirmed there was a fire in the cockpit."

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cockpit fire "because of the substantial damage done to the inside of the cockpit," agency spokesman Keith Holloway told AOL News today.

"We're trying to collect as much data as we can to find out what caused this fire," he said.

United Airlines would not confirm the reason for the emergency landing. "The FAA has put some comments out there," said airline spokesman Mike Trevino. "We'll let the FAA talk about it."

After the emergency landing, Dorr said, the runway was closed for about 30 minutes, and the plane was towed away. The 105 passengers and seven crew members safely left the plane, spent the night in Washington and left for Los Angeles this morning, Trevino said.

Phil Lobel, a passenger on the flight, told The Associated Press he saw somebody take a fire extinguisher to the cockpit. Passengers showed him photos they had taken of the flames.

Cockpit fires are rare. Most of the times when the smell of smoke is reported, it turns out to be something overheating in the plane's galley, not smoke from a fire, said Dorr, who did not have statistics on the frequency of cockpit fires.