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A Qantas Airways flight made an emergency landing in Sydney after it suffered an engine failure shortly after take-off, causing a grassfire at a runway.
Emergency services rushed to the runway shortly after the Qantas flight safely landed at Sydney Airport and authorities reported a grassfire.
It was initially not confirmed if the grassfire was linked to the emergency landing but Airspace safety body Airservices Australia confirmed that the fire incident was directly caused by the flight’s engine failure.
Passengers on the QF520 flight bound for Brisbane heard a “large bang”, an ABC reporter who was on board said on Friday.
A spokesperson at the airport confirmed the flight from Sydney to Brisbane landed safely just after 1pm.
The plane left the Sydney airport at about 12.35pm but just four minutes after take off it changed its direction and halted its ascent. It circled in the sky before returning safely to the airport, making an emergency landing.
Mark Willacy, the reporter who was onboard the flight said a “bang jolted flight QF520 and its passengers and my eyes flashed open”.
“It wasn’t the bang or the shudder that made my blood run cold. It was the plane’s urgent struggle to get altitude,” he wrote on ABC.
“We knew immediately something was wrong, but what was more disturbing, I think, was the plane really laboured after that,” he said.
He said it was about 10-15 minutes into the journey the pilots said “there’d been a major problem with the right engine, that everything was under control at that point”.
The grassfire delayed operations at the airport and airport travelers to check their flight’s status with the airline.
Airservices Australia said: “An engine failure on departure from Runway 34R caused a grass area adjacent to the runway to catch fire.
“ARFF crews quickly attended the grassfire and extinguished it,” a spokesperson said, referring to Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting Service (ARFF).
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said an investigation has been launched to look into the engine failure incident of the flight.
The incident adds to the travel woes of some passengers in the country after a technical outage crippled all of Australia’s major airports, leading to long queues at international terminals. It happened after the disruption of automated kiosks for identity and facial recognition, authorities said.
The issue was resolved by midday, according to the Australian Border Force.
