‘Mayday, mayday’: Boeing cargo plane with flames shooting off engine returns to Miami after takeoff
An Atlas Air Boeing 747-8 cargo plane made an emergency return to Miami late Thursday night after an engine failure, officials say. Videos shared on social media show flames shooting out of the plane, which landed safely about a quarter of an hour after it took off.
A post-flight inspection of the plane revealed it had a “softball size hole” above the #2 engine, according to a preliminary report from the FAA, the same engine that experienced the failure.
Miami International Airport spokesman Greg Chin referred the South Florida Sun Sentinel to a FlightAware page, which showed the plane taking off a little after 10:30 p.m. and landing about 10:45 p.m. The flight was bound for Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in Puerto Rico.
Despite the fiery blaze in the sky, the pilot appeared calm over air traffic control radio.
“Mayday, mayday … we have an engine fire,” he could be heard saying matter-of-factly over archived radio transmissions just after 10:30 p.m., requesting to return to the airport.
“How many souls on board … do you need to burn fuel?” the air traffic controller asked.
“We’ll go ahead and land,” the pilot replied. He said the plane had five people on board and held about five hours of fuel, or 53 tons.
“Is it out already or are you guys still trying to work that out?” the pilot asked about the engine fire.
“It’s engine two and we’re still trying to work it out,” the pilot said. He added that the plane had lost the engine as it was climbing.
The plane “landed safely after experiencing an engine malfunction soon after departure from Miami International Airport (MIA),” an Atlas spokesperson said in a statement. “The crew followed all standard procedures and safely returned to MIA. At Atlas, safety is always our top priority and we will be conducting a thorough inspection.”
Six Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the “hazardous situation” at the airport at 10:40 p.m. and were on standby for landing, a Fire Rescue spokeswoman said. No injuries were reported.
The 747-8’s four engines are GEnx-2B engines, manufactured by GE Aerospace, according to a company spokesperson.
“Safety is our first priority, and GE Aerospace is providing technical assistance to FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board as they investigate the incident,” the spokesperson said.
The fiery incident comes amid heightened scrutiny of Boeing and plane safety following an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month in which a door panel came off of a Boeing 737 Max 9 mid-flight. The FAA has since grounded the Max 9 planes for inspections.
Days before that, a Japan Airlines plane collided with a Coast Guard plane in a fiery explosion at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, killing five crewmembers on board the smaller plane.
Both the FAA and NTSB will investigate Thursday’s incident.
