A Qantas plane made an emergency landing on Friday due to what the airline said was a “contained engine failure” shortly after takeoff from Sydney Airport, sparking a grass fire on a nearby runway and causing several flights to be diverted.
The Qantas flight, QF520, was en route to Brisbane and circled for a “short time” before landing safely at Sydney Airport, Qantas chief pilot Captain Richard Tobiano said in the statement.
There was no initial word on the number of people on board.
DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images
“Qantas engineers conducted a preliminary inspection of the engine and confirmed it was a contained engine failure,” the airline said. “While customers would have heard a loud bang, there was no explosion.”
The Reuters news agency explains that in the event of a contained engine failure, the engine parts remain in the protective housing, intended to prevent them from flying out. If they do, they can cause serious damage to the main body of an aircraft.
Airservices Australia, the government’s aviation regulator, said the engine failure caused “a grass area next to the runway to catch fire”, which was quickly extinguished by firefighters.
DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images
Airservices’ National Operations Management Center conducted a 47-minute ground stop at Sydney airport to ensure the plane could land as quickly as possible, the regulator said in a statement, adding that no one was injured.
Reuters reports that the airport said all runways had reopened on Friday afternoon after the parallel runway was closed for inspection due to the fire.
The plane is a 19-year-old Boeing 737-800, Reuters said, citing Flightradar24. That type of twin-engine passenger plane is designed to fly with just one engine in an emergency, Reuters noted.
Passenger Georgina Lewis said she heard a ‘bang’.
“One of the engines seemed to have broken down. The pilot came by ten minutes later to explain that they had a problem with the right engine on takeoff,” she told local broadcaster Channel Nine.
Another passenger, Mark Willacy, a journalist with Australian national broadcaster ABC, said the plane struggled to get airborne after the “loud bang” sound.
“That big bang when the wheels left the ground and the shudder, it was something I’ve never felt before,” he told ABC. “When we landed, there was a lot of applause and cheering among the passengers.”
Tobiano said his staffers were “highly trained” to respond to such emergencies.
“We understand that this would have been an upsetting experience for customers and we will be contacting all customers this afternoon to provide support,” he said in the statement. “We will also conduct an investigation into the cause of the engine problem.”
Customers were moved to alternative flights, Qantas said.
Eleven domestic flights were canceled and four were diverted to other airports, a Sydney Airport spokesperson said.
