A British Aerospace BAe-146 commuter jet with 97 people on board made a safe return to Perth Airport in Western Australia after an engine caught fire on takeoff at 10:45AM Tuesday morning. The flight landed about 10 minutes later.
As seen in the photo, the number 2 Honeywell ALF 502 engine caught fire. The plane was built in 1995 and spent it's first ten years with Turkish Airlines. Witness on the ground Craig Ablett described the scene:
"I saw this plane fly over and I noticed one of the engines was on fire. It had more or less just taken off. Its not every day you see a plane with it's engine on fire flying over you. The flames coming out of the engine would have been 10, 20 metres long."
A Cobham Aviation spokesperson said, "The aircraft was climbing after take-off when the fire occurred in engine No. 2, which is on the port side of the aircraft. When the fire was detected, the engine was shut down and the fire extinguished."
The plane had been on it's way to Barrow Island. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Cobham operates the flight on behalf of Qantas subsidiary Qantas Link.
Top photo: @PerthNow