Tue 30 Apr 2019:
Zimbabwe airliner, Boeing 767, engine on fire. Flight returning to OR Tambo international airport. pic.twitter.com/jWhcr1AnJx
— PigSpotter™ Pty Ltd (@PigSpotter) April 28, 2019
A video, shared by a popular flight-spotting account on Twitter, shows bright flames bursting out of the aircraft’s left engine as it is flying in the night skies above Johannesburg.
The engine caught fire shortly after an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 767-200 took off from the O.R. Tambo International Airport, near Johannesburg, on Sunday night. The pilots quickly requested an emergency landing.
But the flames were “manually extinguished” mid-air, the spokesperson for the Airport Companies South Africa said, so no emergency landing was needed. After circling around the airport, the plane made it safely to Harare, the capital of neighboring Zimbabwe.
“There was a tail pipe fire but that did not compromise the safety of the flight,” the airline told local media after the incident.
A similar incident happened earlier this month with a Tel Aviv-bound Boeing 767-300ER in Spain when its engine caught fire shortly after takeoff from Barcelona. The aircraft, belonging to Israeli airline Arkia, was forced to turn around and make an emergency landing.
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