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<\/p>\nA Sydney-bound Qantas flight from Queenstown in New Zealand has been forced to divert as footage taken shortly after take-off appears to show flames shooting out from one side of the plane.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the airline confirmed flight QF122 from Queenstown had experienced an incident mid-flight on Saturday, saying it was a “suspected engine issue”, and had to be diverted.<\/p>\n
“One of our flights to Sydney experienced a suspected engine issue after take-off from Queenstown this afternoon and the aircraft diverted to Christchurch,” they said.<\/p>\n
“Our pilots are highly trained to manage situations like this and the aircraft landed safely.”<\/p>\n
In footage provided to ABC News, the aircraft’s left engine seems to be emitting flames.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fight QF122 from Queenstown was due to land in Sydney at 4:50pm on Saturday. (Supplied: Liam Aspinall)<\/p>\n
The Boeing aircraft had left the alpine ski town just before 3:30pm and was scheduled to land at Kingsford Smith Airport at 4:50pm.<\/p>\n
The national carrier told the ABC that the aircraft was cleared for a priority landing at Christchurch, and both engines remained operating throughout, with no engine shutdown or failure experienced.<\/p>\n
Liam Aspinall was sitting with friends having a drink in Queenstown when he noticed the flames approaching from a distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I noticed flames appearing to come off the thing as it was approaching us from afar,” Mr Aspinall told ABC News.<\/p>\n
“Sounded like gunshots, [it] was loud.”<\/p>\n
Support is being provided to passengers, according to the Qantas spokesperson, in recognition of what “would have been a distressing experience”.<\/p>\n
Passengers are being offered accommodation and help with getting alternative flights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sydney-bound Qantas flight from Queenstown in New Zealand has been forced to divert as footage taken shortly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[51010,150808,2143,150819,51069,150820,247],"class_list":["post-88683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-christchurch","tag-flight-qf122","tag-qantas","tag-qantas-plane-incident","tag-queenstown","tag-suspected-engine-issue","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}