Airbus makes emergency landing after engine explodes

An Air France flight bound for Los Angeles from Paris made an emergency landing in Canada on Saturday after one of the jumbo jet’s four engines exploded in mid-air, passengers said.

Passengers aboard the doubledecker Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner, described hearing a loud noise about five hours into the flight. The plane, which had just crossed the southern tip of Greenland, vibrated for several minutes.

About two hours later, the plane landed at Goose Bay Airport in Labrador, on the far northeast edge of Canada.

Air France said in a statement that the engine had suffered “serious damage,” but that the plane landed safely.

“The regularly trained pilots and cabin crew handled this serious incident perfectly,” the statement said.

A passenger, John Birkhead, said he and his wife had just stood up to stretch when they heard the explosion.

Several hours after landing at Goose Bay Airport, passengers were just getting off the plane.

Birkhead said he had heard the reason for the delay was that the small airport — which is home to three air carriers, a coffee shop, a gift shop and three car rental agencies — was not prepared to accommodate the number of passengers on a jet the size of an A380. (Even the world’s biggest airport, in Atlanta, has had trouble accommodating planes of that model.)

“Nobody’s told us why, but the speculation is they’ve got nowhere to put 500-plus people — that’s probably the whole population of Goose Bay,” he said in an interview.

Air France said it was working to reroute passengers through one of its connecting sites in North America.