MIAMI – Melanie Adaros said she was out for a walk with her mother when she heard a loud noise and saw a plane shooting out sparks and flying low on Thursday night.
Adaros was near the Miami Executive Airport.
“There’s always planes flying overhead, but they’re little planes, but this didn’t sound like a little plane. It sounded very low, so I turned,” Adaros told ABC News.
The Federal Aviation Administration reported on Friday that it was a Boeing 747 on Atlas Air Flight 95 returning to the Miami International Airport after takeoff to the Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“You always see a plane going up or going down. This one was just at a steady level and it was shooting sparks,” Adaros said. “It was very surreal.”
The pilot reported an “engine fire” to air traffic control.
“It seemed to do a big, wide, swerving turn,” Adaros said.
The plane departed MIA at about 10:32 p.m. and flew in circles before landing at 10:46 p.m., according to FlightAware data.
According to audio of the communications between the pilot and tower control, there were five people on board and about five hours of fuel, or 53 tons of fuel.
“The crew followed all standard procedures and safely returned to MIA,” a spokesperson for Atlas Air wrote in a statement, also adding, “We will be conducting a thorough inspection to determine the cause.”
Part of the plane’s wing was gone. According to the FAA, a post-flight inspection revealed a softball-sized hole above the plane’s second engine.
Boeing reported the make of the engine is GE Aviation.
The FAA investigation was ongoing on Friday night. The National Transportation Safety Board reported investigators were “collecting information to evaluate and determine” the cause of the engine failure.
The FAA and the NTSB were running separate investigations related to the Boeing 737 Max 9 after the panel of an Alaska Airlines jetliner blew off on Jan. 5 after takeoff from Portland, Oregon.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, reported the Spirit AeroSystems panel was manufactured in Malaysia.
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The FAA is now investigating Boeing’s manufacturing practices and production lines, including those involving subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems, bolstering its oversight of Boeing, and examining potential system change. pic.twitter.com/fXQlJSdGVu
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 17, 2024
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