Air France engine fails over Atlantic

Air France jet engine fails mid-flight with 496 passengers and 24 crew makes an emergency landing at a small Canadian airport. The Airbus A380 flight AF66 from Paris to Los Angeles lost part of an engine over the Atlantic.

Surprisingly no one was injured in the incident, but passengers remained on board hours after landing at 15:42GMT.

David Rehmar, a former aircraft mechanic who was a passenger on the flight, said the incident was a fan failure, as he saw a sudden movement followed by a loud noise, which caused panic among passengers. Rehmar said “you heard a loud boom, and it was the vibration alone that made me think the engine had failed and for a few moments we thought we were going to go down.” But the flight stabilised within 30 seconds which prompted the pilots to quickly shut down the affected engine. According to Rehmar a bird strike was not likely cause of the incident at such high altitude and his experience led him believe the stage-one fan – the exterior fan blades on the3 front of the engine – had somehow failed.

The plane went on to fly for about an hour on three engines before it reached Goose Bay Airport, in Labrador in eastern Canada.

Passengers remained stranded on the plane in Canada, as the airport was not equipped to handle an Airbus A380. Passengers have been told that two Air France 777s were on the way from Montreal to pick up the passengers.

Air France in a statement said: “ serious damage to one engine, but Air France crew handled this serious incident perfectly”.