A Delta Air Lines flight from Sao Paulo to Atlanta had to return after the plane’s left engine spat flames. No one was injured.
Delta Flight 104 took off from the Brazilian city at 11:49 p.m. Sunday, then returned and landed just 10 minutes later, according to tracking website FlightAware.
A video posted to social media reportedly taken by one of the passengers on board Flight 104 shows sparks from the engine fire and panicked cries of passengers as the plane ascended.
“There wasn’t even time to think much because it happened right after takeoff. We started to climb, the plane had its first explosion, there was a bright flash inside the plane; nobody understood what was happening. Thank God the pilot was brilliant, brilliant. When he spoke, he was super calm, and the landing was better than we thought,” passenger Aline Araujo told Brazilian news site G1.
Delta told USA Today that the plane, which was carrying 272 passengers and 14 crew members, had an unspecified left engine issue that necessitated its swift return to the Sao Paulo airport. After safely landing, the passengers were returned to the airport by bus.
A witness on the ground compared the sound to the 1989 Transbrasil Flight 801 crash in Sao Paulo, in which a cargo flight scheduled to land at the airport instead crashed into a residential area, killing three crew members and 22 others on the ground.
Juliana Theodoro told G1, “I heard a very loud explosion; my whole house shook. I was lying down and didn’t know what it was. I just turned to my husband and said, ’It sounds like the noise I heard when I was a child before the plane crashed.’”
Delta told USA Today that “the safety of our customers and crew is our highest priority. We apologize to our customers for this delay in their travels.”
