A United Airlines flight traveling from San Diego to Chicago was forced to make an emergency landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico early Monday morning after a mechanical issue caused flames to shoot out of one of the plane’s engines, CNN reported.
Fortunately, the flight landed without incident and no injuries were reported. A different aircraft was brought in to transport passengers to their destination.
Passenger Thomas Chorny posted dramatic video of the flaming engine to Twitter.
“Strange to sit there & think ‘What if this is it?’ To just sit there & accept the potential fate that seems to be a possibility & not tell the sleeping people all around you. No need to panic the others. I’m a pretty calm person but took me a while to stop the shakes & trembles,” he wrote.
Strange to sit there & think ‘What if this is it?’ To just sit there & accept the potential fate that seems to be a possibility & not tell the sleeping people all around you. No need to panic the others. I’m a pretty calm person but took me a while to stop the shakes & trembles. pic.twitter.com/4rWfNvFhBM
— Thomas Chorny (@SteepleCoach) December 16, 2019
Chorny said that it’s likely that only a few people witnessed the flames. “The plane started to shake a bit like it was hitting turbulence but the wings were perfectly still. I was halfway falling asleep but opened my eyes to look out the window and saw flames shooting from the right engine,” he told CNN. “They shut down the engine to idle and the flames went out and then they started banking left for quite a while and we dropped a bunch of altitude. It took another 10 minutes or so before they announced that we would be landing at Albuquerque.”
United confirmed that the flight “diverted to Albuquerque following a mechanical issue with one of the engines.”
“The flight landed safely, and customers deplaned normally at the gate. Our maintenance team in Albuquerque will inspect the aircraft and we’ve arranged for a different plane to get our customers to their destination which has departed,” the airline added.
On Sunday, a United Airlines flight traveling from Paris to Chicago made an emergency landing in Manchester, England due to a technical issue.
