Firefighters enter a plane that caught fire at McCarran International Airport Tuesday in Las Vegas.(Photo: John Locher, AP)

Fire broke out Tuesday on a British Airways flight at the Las Vegas airport, but it was put out with only a couple of minor injuries, according to McCarran International Airport.

The plane's left engine caught fire and the crew aborted its takeoff, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. Passengers exited using the emergency slides and were awaiting buses back to the terminal.

Flight 2276 – a Boeing 777-200 with 275 seats – was scheduled to take off about 4 p.m. Pacific time, for London's Gatwick Airport when the incident happened, according to the airport's Twitter feed.

The fire was put out by 4:22 p.m., according to the airport. By that point, all passengers were off the plane and awaiting buses to the terminal, the airport said.

The incident took one runway out of service, but the airport said the other three runways were operating.

Witness Paul Berberian, who shot a video of the plane, told CNN, "The whole thing kind of played out in the course of just a few minutes."

The plane was carrying 159 passengers and 13 crew members, and two were transported for minor injuries, the airport said.

Guardian reporter Jacob Steinberg was one of the passengers on the plane. He had been asleep when the plane started to take off, then awoke when it came to a "crashing" halt. He could smell and see smoke, and noted that there was panic during the evacuation.

"A few have cuts and bruises from the slide down," he tweeted. "They've been bandaged up. One young woman was taken away by paramedics, but looked ok."

The pilot told passengers that there had been a "catastrophic failure of the engine," Steinberg tweeted.

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