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Damaged Air Canada plane lands safely in Spain

By ARITZ PARRA and CIARÁN GILES, Associated Press
Published: February 3, 2020, 3:24pm
5 Photos
An Air Canada Boeing 767 aircraft is surrounded of safety vehicles after an emergency landing at the Adolfo Suarez-Barajas international airport in Barajas, outskirts of Madrid, Monday, Feb. 2, 2020.
An Air Canada Boeing 767 aircraft is surrounded of safety vehicles after an emergency landing at the Adolfo Suarez-Barajas international airport in Barajas, outskirts of Madrid, Monday, Feb. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) Photo Gallery

MADRID — Passengers on an Air Canada Boeing 767 that made a safe emergency landing in Madrid on Monday evening have described how they spent hours flying in circles to burn fuel in a tense calm.

Toronto-bound flight AC837, carrying 128 passengers, departed from Madrid in the early afternoon but had to request an emergency return almost immediately after one of its two engines was damaged and a tire ruptured during takeoff.

Brock Mierzejewski, from Vancouver, who was on the plane with his parents, told The Associated Press: “Obviously a lot of nervous tension while we were in the air, but the pilots did a terrific job landing the plane.”

There was no immediate information on what had caused the malfunction.

The plane spent close to four hours flying in circles near Madrid, burning off fuel before it was light enough for landing. Spain’s Defense Ministry dispatched an F18 fighter jet to evaluate the damage done to the landing gear.

In a statement, the airline said the plane “experienced an engine issue shortly after takeoff” from the same airport, as well as a ruptured tire — one of 10 on the Boeing 767-300. It added that the aircraft “is designed to operate on one engine and our pilots are fully trained for this eventuality.”

A spokesman for Enaire, Spain’s air navigation authority, said the plane’s landing gear did not fold up properly on taking off and that a piece of it may have damaged part of one of the engines.

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