Plane’s Engine Falls Off Mid-Air
An Iranian plane has made an emergency landing after part of its engine fell apart two minutes after take-off.
The Boeing 747, which had 426 passengers on board, had just departed from Tehran’s Mehrabad airport when “a piece of engine number three came off and hit the body of the plane”.
Iranian journalists have claimed the engine part fell into an urban area, but no one on the ground is thought to have been injured.
Pilots of the Mahan Air plane decided to immediately return to the airport, and landed it safely just after 7.15am local time on Thursday morning.
According to the private airline, the aircraft had undergone all necessary safety checks and inspections prior to departure.
Affected passengers were being taken to their destination, the southern city of Bandar Abbas, on a different plane.
Hundreds of casualties have been reported in Iran over recent years following a spate of air crashes.
Mahan Air operates domestic and long-distance flights – some of which travel from Tehran to Italy, Germany, Greece and Turkey. (Yorkshire Coast Radio News)