A Cathay Pacific jumbo jet bound for Los Angeles with 369 passengers on board was forced to return to Hong Kong after one of its engines was shut down over Taiwan.
Passengers on Flight CX880, which left Hong Kong at 11.40pm on Wednesday, reported seeing flames shooting out of an engine and the aircraft then turning around and dumping fuel before returning to Hong Kong early on Thursday.
The incident came just four days after an Airbus A330 operated by subsidiary Dragonair caught fire on a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong and was forced to return to the capital.
Cathay Pacific Airways confirmed that the captain of the Boeing 747-400 shut down the No3 engine and turned the aircraft around near Taiwan before dumping 60 tonnes of fuel to meet airport weight requirements. The plane then made a priority landing at Hong Kong at about 2.40am.
Fire services at Chek Lap Kok were on standby for the landing.
One woman said her husband, who was flying to Dallas via Los Angeles on the late-night flight, had sent her two e-mails from Hong Kong in the middle of the night before he departed again on another aircraft and later telephoned her from the US.
'He said that the engine flamed out and had to be shut down - and that was over Taiwan - and they had to return to Hong Kong to land,' she said. 'They shut down the engine and they were in the air for over an hour dumping fuel because they could not land at Hong Kong with so much fuel.
