Passengers safe after flight returns to Las Vegas with engine emitting smoke

A mechanical issue caused a plane taking off from Las Vegas to make an emergency landing back at the airport after emitting smoke and sparks, according to American Airlines.

The airliner reported 153 passengers and six crew members safely deplaned around 8:20 a.m. at Harry Reid International Airport after the mid-air scare.

American Airlines Flight 1665 was headed to Charlotte, North Carolina, when passengers and those on the ground noticed an engine making banging noises with smoke and what appeared to be fire shooting into the air.

“Pretty frightening,” Mark Jackson said. “You can see that there are still flames coming out of the engine, and you can still hear the explosions.”

Jackson watched the situation unfold while charging his car at a Target on Flamingo before getting on the road to Utah after spending two nights in Las Vegas.

“I heard a loud explosion,” Jackson said. “First, I thought that could be fireworks, commercial grade, because it was too loud to be regular. I looked up, and that was when I saw the second explosion, and that was even louder than the first."

He watched the plane as it appeared to lose altitude and return to the airport.

“Very scary to witness that,” Jackson said.

News 3 spoke with Dan Bubb, a former commercial airline pilot and current UNLV professor, about the engine trouble. He suspected it was a compressor stall that caused the problem.

“When air goes into a jet engine and it is compressed, you might have some sort of mechanical issues that disrupt that air flow,” Bubb said. “As a result, you can get a number of things: you can get sparks, you can get flashes of light. You might even hear these loud bangs. Some people liken it to like machine gun fire, and those are classic cases of what's called a compressor stall.”

He said various factors can cause a compressor stall.

“It could be a broken part,” Jackson said. “It could be any number of things in the engine. Where you might have metal, kind of rubbing. Something disrupted the airflow, and that could be like a metal part that might be loose, or something like that.”

While the scenario can appear frightening, Bubb said pilots train for it.

“Pilots go through this training all the time,” Bubb said. “When we're in the simulator - it's very, very frequent when an instructor will shut down an engine on us, say, ‘hey, you got a compressor stall, go through the proper procedure,’ and that's exactly what we do."

The procedure includes identifying the engine that has a problem and shutting it down. Pilots will then contact air traffic control to notify them about the engine shutting down and needing priority to come back and land.

“To passengers, to people on the ground, they might be alarmed,” Bubb said. “To pilots, we're routinely trained to undergo these procedures, and so to us, we identify it and go through the proper procedure.”

This type of issue can happen at any time during a flight, but Bubb said, “It tends to happen more when you're taking off, because that's when the engines are at maximum takeoff power.”

American Airlines said the aircraft taxied to the gate under its power, and customers deplaned normally.

“We appreciate the professionalism of our crew and thank our team who are working to get our customers to their destinations as quickly as possible.”

A spokesperson for Harry Reid International Airport said the fire department inspected the engine. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement that it will investigate.