An Air France flight from Paris to Los Angeles made an emergency landing in Canada on Saturday after one of its engines failed during an Atlantic crossing.
The double-deck Airbus A380 aircraft landed safely at Goose Bay Airport on the eastern tip of Canada, according to a statement from Air France. The airline said it suffered “serious damage to one of its four engines.”
“The regularly trained pilots and cabin crew handled this serious incident perfectly,” the airline said in a statement. “The passengers are currently being assisted by teams dispatched to the location.”
Air France Flight 66 departed from the gate at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday, 10:10 a.m. local time, but taxied for more than 90 minutes before eventually departing at 11:42 a.m Paris time, according to FlightAware.
According to Flightradar24, the Airbus A380, the largest passenger jet in the world, encountered the failure while the jet was flying at 37,000 feet near Greenland. The aircraft aborted its Atlantic crossing to Los Angeles and landed there at 12:42 p.m. local time, 11:42 a.m. ET or 15:42 GMT.
Sarah Eamigh, a passenger on the flight, told CNN partner CTV News that passengers sensed something was wrong during the flight.
“We heard a loud pop, and we had a quick descent along with some vibration. It definitely was not turbulence so we knew something was wrong,” she told the Canadian broadcaster.
“The captain was able to recover the plane quite fast, however, we were definitely nervous because the vibrating was probably occurring a good five to eight minutes. And then the captain basically 10 to 15 minutes after provided an announcement stating that we had a small engine explosion.”
Photos from the flight showed the entire front part of the engine, including the large fan and engine’s casing, completely sheared away. The remaining portion of the outermost engine on the right side of the jet was streaked with a brown substance and there were no obvious signs of any external fire.
CULLED FROM: http://edition.cnn.com/
