Smoke, fire spotted on Air Canada engine before plane landed safely

An Air Canada plane is seen in this undated file photo.

An Air Canada flight that was forced to return to Pearson because of engine trouble caught the attention of several people on the ground who noticed flames coming out of the plane’s engine.

The flight landed safely without any issues and no injuries were reported.

However, several people contacted CP24 with a similar story about what they saw and heard.

A woman named Sara said she was standing on her driveway in Rexdale with a friend at around 7:50 p.m. Friday when she heard loud popping sounds.

The sounds were so loud, she thought they were happening on her street but when she didn’t notice anything unusual, she looked up.

“I looked up and saw flames shooting out from under the left engine and then (the flames) stopped,” she told CP24.com. “Two times, we saw fire shoot out of the engine followed by black smoke.”

She said the flight never looked like it was struggling and that it appeared to cruise along normally.

A Twitter user named Kevin described something similar.

“I watched it throw flames out of its engine as it flew over my house,” he said.

“There were three big bangs and fire with each sound a little before 8 p.m.,” said another Twitter user named Anwar.

In fact, the flight experienced a surge in the left engine and returned to Pearson as a precaution.

A surge in an engine is similar to a car backfiring, and is not considered to be dangerous even though often, flames and smoke can be seen as a result.

Air Canada said the plane is now out of service for inspection by its maintenance team.

The flight was headed to Ottawa when it was forced to return to Toronto.

There were 175 people on board.