Thirteen people trapped for 90 minutes after a theme park ride stopped mid-air in Australia

Over a dozen people were stranded in the air minutes after a theme park ride malfunctioned in Gold Coast, Australia. The ride stopped mid-air due to a "sensor communication fault", said an official from Sea World.

According to the theme park, the Vortex ride experienced a "standard ride stoppage" on Tuesday afternoon.

“All 13 guests onboard are safe and our team are communicating with them as we prepare to exit them from the ride,” Sea World said in a statement.

The passengers were rescued from the 15-metre high ride after Sea World's engineering team manually lowered the ride and the people exited safely after 90 minutes.

The Queensland ambulance arrived at the rescue site in case any assistance was needed.

“Our on-site nurse provided welfare checks in an abundance of caution with them upon exiting the ride,” the theme park said.

Queensland fire department also reached the scene "should the manual process not work", however, they were not needed, said Sea World.

"The safety and wellbeing of our guests is our highest priority and ride stoppages are proof rides systems and operators are doing as they are designed and trained to do to keep our guests safe," The company added. "Our team regularly train for these exercises and we have a strong working relationship with the QFES team."

This incident was the second in less than a week when a side stopped working, leaving passengers trapped. Last Thursday, the Leviathan roller-coaster stopped working, due to a sensor issue as well, leaving passengers stuck for about an hour.

“At all times throughout the stoppage, the guests were safe and our team were in constant communication with them,” the company said about the incident earlier. “The guests onboard exited the ride from the safe stop zones with the help of our team.”

(With inputs from agencies)