Qantas plane returns to Australia airport, makes emergency landing due to engine failure

A Qantas plane made an emergency landing Friday due to what the airline said was a “contained engine failure” soon after taking off from Sydney Airport, sparking a grassfire on a nearby runway and causing several flights to be diverted.

The Qantas flight, QF520, was bound for Brisbane and was circling for a “short period of time” before landing safely back 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.

“Qantas engineers have 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 not an explosion.”

The Reuters news agency explains that in a contained engine failure, the engine’s parts stay inside the protective housing meant to keep them from flying out. If they do, they could cause severe damage to the main body of a plane.

Airservices Australia, the government’s aviation regulator, said the engine failure caused “a grass area adjacent to the runway to catch fire” that was swiftly extinguished by firefighters.

The Airservices’ National Operations Management Centre enacted 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 hurt.

Reuters reports that the airport said all its runways had re-opened by Friday afternoon after the parallel runway had been closed for inspection because of the fire.

The aircraft is a 19-year-old Boeing 737-800, Reuters said, citing Flightradar24. That type of twin-engine passenger plane is designed to be able to fly using only one engine in an emergency, Reuters noted.

Passenger Georgina Lewis said she heard a “bang.”

“One of the engines appeared to have gone. The pilot came on 10 minutes later to explain that they had a problem with a right-hand engine on takeoff,” she told local outlet Channel Nine.

Another passenger, Mark Willacy, a journalist with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, said the plane struggled to get airborne following the “loud bang” noise.

“That big bang as the wheels were leaving the ground and the shudder, that was like nothing I have ever felt,” he told ABC. “When we landed, there was a lot of applause and cheering amongst the passengers.”

Tobiano said his staff members were “highly trained” to respond to such emergency situations.

“We understand this would have been a distressing experience for customers and we will be contacting all customers this afternoon to provide support,” he said in the statement. “We will also be conducting an investigation into what caused the engine issue.”

Customers were being moved to alternate flights, Qantas said.

Eleven domestic flights were cancelled and four diverted to other airports, a Sydney Airport spokesperson said.