Shocking footage has revealed the moment flames started to shoot out of the side of a passenger jet shortly after takeoff.
Shot from the ground, it tracks a Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles with 115 people on board following its departure from Salt Lake City on Monday morning.
As it moves up and across the sky, a huge burst of flames can be seen blasting out of the aircraft’s fuselage.
Eyewitness Al Oshiro, who shot the footage, said: “All of a sudden I started seeing these orange flames just coming off the right side of the engine.”
The aerospace engineer for Moog Inc said he heard a sound “so loud that a lot of people came out of the building because people thought the building was getting hit”.
The plane was forced to return to Salt Lake City International Airport to make an emergency landing.
Southwest Airlines said in a statement that the pilots had received a cockpit indicator of “a potential performance issue” with one of the jet’s engines.
The aircraft had 110 passengers and five crew members on board.
A spokeswoman for the airport, Nancy Volmer, said that no one aboard the Boeing 737-700 was hurt.
The passengers were put on another flight to LA.
Additional reporting by Associated Press.
