China Eastern flight packed with terrified passengers makes emergency landing with huge hole in engine

Mark Chandler12 June 2017

A Shanghai-bound plane packed with terrified passengers was forced to make an emergency landing with a huge gaping hole in one of its engines.

Photos showed a jagged gash more than a metre-long in the engine casing of the China Eastern’s Flight 736 from Sydney.

Television station Seven News reported passengers heard a bang shortly after Flight MU736 took off and could then smell burning before the captain declared a mid-air emergency.

"We went up in the air and all of a sudden we heard this noise,” one passenger told Seven News. “It kind of smelt like burning.

The plane made an emergency landing
REUTERS

“Oh, I was scared. Yeah, I was really scared. Our group was terrified.”

Another passenger said the cabin crew tried to calm passengers and told them to fasten their seatbelts after a noise was heard.

"We were very panicked because we had no idea what was happening," she told Channel 9 television.

The plane after it landed safely at Sydney
AP

The Airbus A330-200 twin jet landed without incident and there were no injuries, said Kathy Zhang, general manager at China Eastern Airlines.

"The crew observed the abnormal situation of the left engine and decided to return to Sydney airport immediately. All passengers and crew members were landed safely," she said.

A spokeswoman for Rolls-Royce, which manufactured the plane's Trent 700 series engines, said: "We are aware of the incident and will be working closely with our customer and relevant partners to understand the cause of the issue."

Professor Jason Middleton, an aviation expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said it appeared that the engine cowling had been ripped away forward of the main compressor blade.

"When one of these things happens you often don't know how the damage began. It could have begun from loose screws," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. News.

The Australia Transport Safety Bureau said it was investigating the incident.

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