Finnair flight from Malaga forced to put down in Amsterdam after engine failure

Emergency landing went without problems

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A failure in one of the engines, which caused it to shut down, forced a Finnair flight from Malaga to Helsinki to reroute and make an unscheduled landing in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening some two hours after taking off.
      The first passengers arrived back in Finland on another flight just before midnight. Mirja Wilska from Helsinki reported that the pilot Jussi Airas had handled the incident well, and she said that there had been no panic in the cabin.
     
"The plane wobbled a bit when the starboard-side motor cut out. I could feel it, even though I don't know anything about the engineering side of things. We flew lower before we got to Amsterdam."
      According to another passenger, Timo Lindholm from Hyvinkää, the engine shut down over France.
      "I was sitting on the right-hand side next to the engine, and I heard it starting to make coughing and banging sounds. A few moments later the pilot came on the intercom system and said we had lost power in one of the engines", said Lindholm at Helsinki-Vantaa International shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning.
      According to the Finnair Flight Safety Manager Erkki Ahde, the situation was more of an exceptional event than an emergency. "The passengers were not in danger. Each of our pilots trains twice a year in the simulator for such a situation, when the plane needs to be flown on one engine", added Ahde.
     
The Airbus 320's starboard motor suffered a major failure and shut down, and as a result some components that broke loose inside the engine cowling blocked the oil filter.
      On Tuesday evening it was unclear what part of the jet engine had failed, and the cause will not be known until the unit is removed from the wing and examined thoroughly.
      In most cases, failures like this are caused by a weakness in the materials - basically, something breaks. Sometimes it can be a result of faulty maintenance, commented a Finnair representative. However, breakdowns such as this in Airbus engines are extremely rare, even in international terms. The engine was manufactured in France.
     
The flight from Malaga was scheduled to arrive in Helsinki sometime after 7 p.m. yesterday, but was diverted and touched down in Amsterdam Schipol at 16:32 local time.
      The airport had been alerted to the difficulties by the pilot and had prepared for an emergency landing, with firefighting vehicles put at the ready, but the landing was normal and the plane taxied to the arrival gate without further problems.
      The flight was carrying 117 passengers. Around 100 flew on to Helsinki in another Finnair aircraft and the remainder were carried onward by KLM.
     
In a separate incident, an Air Finland charter flight to Bourgas in Bulgaria was seriously delayed on Tuesday by a fault in the Boeing 757's pressurization system.
      The morning departure, carrying 211 passengers, was obliged to turn back to Helsinki soon after take-off.
      A second attempt was made after a processor module was changed, but the fault recurred and the pilot once again returned to Helsinki-Vantaa.
      The flight eventually left successfully at around 8 p.m.


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