Passenger recalls seeing cabin lights flicker and ‘a lot of screaming’ after suspected engine issue

Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Liza-Jayne Loch was returning home from a business trip to New Zealand when her Qantas flight ran into trouble.

The plane was climbing above the scenic South Island’s mountain ranges on Saturday afternoon, bound for Sydney, when a bang shook the cabin.

A passenger seated near the left wing soon shouted “the engine’s on fire”, Loch recalled, as the cabin lights began to flicker.

Footage recorded by a passenger and shared with AAP shows flames appearing to issue from the plane’s left engine in a series of rapid bursts.

“I was sitting on the left-hand side of the plane, and the flames were very, very visible,” Loch said.

“There was a lot of screaming at the time.”

As the plane continued to gain altitude, Loch tried to comfort herself by recalling that modern jets could land safely on a single engine.

“That’s what I kept in my head, that we could actually fly on one engine,” she said.

“But the flames kept coming and the noise kept coming.”

Qantas flight QF122 suffered a suspected engine issue shortly after taking off from Queenstown on Saturday afternoon, before making a priority landing at Christchurch.

According to FlightAware, the Boeing 737 landed about 52 minutes after takeoff, touching down shortly before 5pm local time.

The cause of the incident has yet to be determined, but Qantas sent two engineers to Christchurch on Sunday to investigate.

Both engines are thought to have remained in operation for the duration of the flight.

Source: Read the original article on www.theguardian.com

Written by https://futureknowledge.in/