Bound for Dallas, Plane Comes Back to John Wayne After Engine Bang Is Heard

An American Airlines jet carrying 110 passengers to Dallas returned to John Wayne Airport immediately after takeoff Tuesday, after crew members heard a bang in the left engine like a car backfiring.

The twin-engine Boeing 757 left at 11:32 a.m. and was about two miles south of the airport when the pilot reported an engine malfunction and got clearance to turn around for an emergency landing, airport spokeswoman Kathleen Campini Chambers said.

The pilot heard a loud noise from the engine under the left wing and shut it down, American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said.

“I’m sure the passengers heard it too,” Smith said. The crew “looked back and saw a brief puff of smoke out of that engine.”

The pilot activated the engine’s built-in extinguisher twice, and firefighters on the ground found nothing burning when they reached the engine, said Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority.

Officials said any fire was probably the result of residual fuel or hydraulic fluid burning off.

Because of noise regulations, planes leaving John Wayne must climb at full throttle until they reach 1,000 feet, then may slow down, Smith said. Flight 640 was about at the point when the pilot could throttle back when he heard the noise, he said.

After landing, the plane taxied to an area about 100 feet from the terminal, as a precaution, and the passengers disembarked through the front door and down a rolling stairway, Chambers said. No emergency evacuation procedures were used, she said.

Smith said maintenance crews would replace the Rolls-Royce RB211 jet engine and ship the faulty one to American Airlines’ overhaul facility in Fort Worth for an examination.

“It’s more disconcerting or inconvenient than anything,” Smith said of the forced landing. “Every pilot will tell you he or she is making plans for this when they take off.”

About 100 of the passengers took the airline’s subsequent flight to Dallas, which left at 1:10 p.m., Smith said. Others flew on a different airline or took later flights, he said.

The 757, which Boeing introduced in 1982, is known for having a safety record with few blemishes.

In July 1996, a United Airlines 757 en route from Miami to Denver made an emergency landing in Wichita, Kan., after an engine compressor stalled, making popping noises and causing the plane to shudder.

Deadly 757 crashes in Colombia in December 1995 and off the Dominican Republic in February 1996 were blamed on pilot error, and one off Peru in October 1996 was traced to ground crews mistakenly leaving adhesive tape on altitude sensors.

But the December 1993 crash of a corporate jet that killed five people in Santa Ana forever changed the safety of small planes landing behind 757s. It was the latest in a string of small-plane crashes traced to the unique turbulence 757s leave in their wake, and forced FAA officials to require that small planes stay five miles behind any 757 instead of four.