A Boeing 737 touring from Houston to Cancun suffered a serious mechanical failure minutes after take off on Tuesday, forcing the passenger airplane to return to Pastime Airport so passengers might safely disembark. Vacationers aboard the Southwest Airways flight witnessed a terrifying scene because the airplane’s proper engine started spewing flames and smoke, as NBC Information studies.

Southwest Flight 307 had hardly begun its preliminary climb when the crew heard loud banging noises coming from the right-hand engine. Fireplace began streaking from the engine shortly thereafter, in keeping with Easy Flying, and passengers aboard the airplane managed to seize the failure mid-flight. One passenger with a window seat simply behind the appropriate wing recorded the flames, per Sky Information:

The flight crew minimize the engine and halted the airplane’s climb at 3,000 toes, then returned to Houston Pastime the place a runway was cleared so the airplane might land and passengers might board a substitute plane. All in all, the Boeing 737 was within the air for 16 minutes. Nobody was damage within the incident, nevertheless it’s probably that passengers suffered fairly a scare.

These aboard the flight, nevertheless, weren’t the one ones who witnessed the dramatic failure. Airport employee Andrew Sandino observed that the airplane was in bother shortly after takeoff, and he recorded the incident from the bottom, later explaining that the airplane “began capturing actually massive fireballs out, and the airplane was shifting backwards and forwards, aspect to aspect, fairly closely.”

Sandino anxious the passenger airplane was in peril of crashing. He went on to say, “I used to be pondering this airplane might crash. If that engine simply utterly explodes and sends shrapnel in every single place, the airplane goes to fizzle out and hit the bottom.” The video footage, captured by Sandino and shared by KHOU11, certainly, might have led many individuals to imagine {that a} crash was imminent.

The reason for the failure remains to be unknown, and Southwest Airways hasn’t but elaborated upon what led to the fireplace. The airline has to date solely mentioned that the airplane suffered a mechanical concern “and was taken out of service for overview.” No passengers had been harmed, and a substitute airplane met vacationers on the runway. The Southwest Airways flight from Houston to Cancun reportedly arrived two and a half hours late. Higher late than by no means.