Once again the news around the manufacturer Boeing is not very reassuring. A plane from the Australian company Qantas, a 737, had to make an emergency landing this Friday due to damage to one of its engines shortly after taking off from Sydney airport.
The flight was to transport its passengers from Sydney to Brisbane. But the plane was forced to turn around for an emergency landing after circling in the air “for a short period of time”, said the airline's chief pilot, Richard Tobiano.
A “big boom” heard by passengers
The air regulator Airservices Australia, for its part, explained in a press release that the engine failure had triggered “a fire in a grass area adjacent to the runway”, which was immediately extinguished by the firefighters. The runway affected by this brief fire was closed and should be operational again Friday evening, according to the same source, which specified that the incident had not caused any injuries.
If on the side of the air carrier we explain a “contained engine failure”, for the passengers, the feeling is completely different. Mark Willacy, a journalist who was on the plane, told Australian broadcaster ABC which employs him that the plane had difficulty taking off after a “loud boom”. This noise occurred at the decisive moment of the take-off phase. “When the wheels came off the ground and the shaking, I never felt anything like it,” he also confided.
Another passenger, Georgina Lewis, also claims to have heard a “boom”. “One of the engines seemed to have failed. The pilot spoke ten minutes later to explain that there had been a problem with the right engine on takeoff,” she told local television station Channel Nine.
“No explosion” according to the company
“Although customers heard a loud bang, there was no explosion,” explains the airline in a press release published on its website, which aims to be reassuring. “Qantas engineers carried out a preliminary inspection of the engine and confirmed it was a contained engine failure.” ” We will […] conduct an investigation to determine the cause of the engine problem,” added Richard Tobiano.
In the meantime, customers have been transferred to other flights, Qantas said. Eleven domestic flights were canceled and four others were diverted to other airports, a Sydney Airport spokesperson said.
