None of the flight’s passengers or crew were injured in the chilling incident, and passengers, who were headed to the Hajj, were boarded onto a new flight later Wednesday.

A Boeing 747-400 with 468 people aboard was forced to make an emergency landing in Indonesia on Wednesday after one of its engines caught fire and began shooting out flames during takeoff.

The Garuda Indonesia flight was bound for Medina, Saudi Arabia, which is the entry point for many Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca. It left from Indonesia’s international airport in Makassar, where clips showed one of the plane’s four engines becoming engulfed in flames during takeoff on Wednesday evening.

Videos of the engine fire were shared online by JACDEC, a plane crash data evaluation firm, which showed that the flames began just as the plane had lifted from the runway.

  • mercano@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 months ago

    The last 747-400 passenger plane rolled off the production line in 2005. This is either going to be a maintenance issue or the engine ingesting debris or a bird, not faulty construction. Boeing doesn’t even make the engines, it’s either GE, Pratt & Whitney, or Rolls Royce, depending on the original owner’s preference.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      This here. As much as I hate the new Boeing philosophy, they used to build good planes and this issue is most certainly a maintenance problem or bird strike etc…

    • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      01·
      6 months ago

      Why would it being a maintenance problem make it any better at all?

      “Don’t worry guys, the planes aren’t inherently defective, we’re just not maintaining them correctly!”

      Super comforting.

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    This is another article that claimed a jet engine burst into flames, when all that happened was an engine surge. The engine didn’t catch fire, the engine did the jet version of a backfire, and only once during the takeoff roll.

  • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    completed an approximately 90-minute holding pattern before safely returning to and landing in Makassar.

    Lol wtf!? I get that it was past the point of no return and had to commit to take off but a 90 min wait to land again seems insane.

    • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      My guess is that they wanted the plane to use up most of the fuel before attempting the landing. As long as the plane is flying, the speed of the plane adds a level of safety to the fire. Once the plane lands and slows down, that fire would start affecting the rest of the wing much more, but there can’t be a big kaboom anymore if the fuel tanks are empty.

      • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        Long distance 747 flighs usually take off above the maximum landng weight. They need to get rid of the fuel before landing, but the 400 has the ability to dump fuel.

        The engine wasn’t on fire. The engine had a surge on takeoff. They would have shut the engine off as it might have been damaged, but the plane was not on fire. They would have landed much sooner if it was.

        Many articles describe engine surges with language that, while not technically a lie, is written to make readers conclude that the airplane is actually on fire.