Indonesia: Boeing plane bound for Medina makes emergency landing after engine catches fire

In another incident concerning the safety of passengers, a Boeing plane was forced to make an emergency landing after a fire was spotted in one of the engines when taking off.

With 450 passengers and 18 crew members on board, the Garuda Indonesia plane departed for Medina in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday (May 15).

The Garuda Indonesia released a statement saying that the Boeing 747-400 aircraft immediately returned to the Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport after “fire was observed in one of the engines”.

The statement added that no one was injured in the incident.

It was scheduled to land back in Indonesia's Makassar.

Several passengers on the aircraft were due to take part in Mecca's annual Hajj pilgrimage.

“The captain discovered that one of the engines was on fire and immediately decided that further inspection was necessary to determine whether the engine was faulty," Garuda Indonesia president Irfan Setiaputra said.

“The decision was made immediately after the aircraft took off,” he added.

The airline stated that they had provided the passengers affected in the incident with accommodation.

Boeing 737 plane crashes in Senegal, 11 injured

The incident comes days after a Boeing 737-300 crashed during takeoff in Senegal on Thursday (May 9), injuring 11 passengers.

Four out of the 11 had sustained serious injuries.

The Air Senegal aircraft HC 301, which was headed for Bamako, the capital of Mali, veered off the runway, according to a statement from Dakar's Blaise Diagne airport in the morning.

The pilot had suffered minor injuries, while the majority of the 78 people on board were unharmed.

"We inform you that Blaise Diagne International Airport has reopened. Airport operations have resumed as normal," said LAS, which is made up of the Turkish business Limak, the publicly owned airport operator AIBD, and another Turkish entity, Summa.

(With inputs from agencies)