Dozens of WestJet passengers arrived at the Edmonton International Airport Sunday night breathing a sigh of relief after a frightening ordeal.
“It was the first time I experienced something like that. It was terrible. Very,very scary,” Joanna Palczewska of Edmonton said. “They were serving drinks and it was like a small explosion in one of the engines. They had a scary look between each other and you could see and hear that something is going wrong.”
Palczewska was one of over a hundred passengers who spent the night in Reykjavik Iceland after the WestJet flight they were on experienced engine trouble over the Atlantic.
“Very professional,” she said of the pilot and crew. “But I could see the looks they were sending to each other. They were trying to keep calm. Everything was prepared for us when we arrived, fire trucks, police, and Iceland Red Cross.”
The WestJet flight travelling from London’s Gatwick Airport to Edmonton was forced to make an unscheduled stop Saturday morning. WS27 was diverted to Keflavík International Airport after crews detected a potential mechanical issue.
“It felt like just some severe turbulence and then you heard a little bit of a bang and about an hour later the pilot came on and said we needed to make an emergency landing in Iceland and we’re just circling to use up some fuel,” Cheryse Pochynok said.
Passengers say the plane circled for nearly two hours before landing.
READ MORE: WestJet passengers arriving Sunday evening after emergency landing in Iceland
“It made a loud noise, that at first you didn’t know if it was turbulence, or something going on with the landing gear that shouldn’t be happening,” Dave Parker said. “There was a big thump and you could tell very quickly that it wasn’t normal because all the flight attendants were secretly discussing what they thought was going on.”
Parker added the passengers remained quite calm during the entire ordeal.
“The pilot announced that the engine had some sort of a mishap and that they were checking it out. It seemed to be running normally at the time- there really wasn’t an atmosphere of uneasiness that I could detect.”
Louise Gaul wished the passengers would have been given more information regarding what happened and where they would be spending the night.
“We were unloaded off the plane and then we sat on the tarmac in a bus for 40 minutes not knowing if they were going to get back on {the flight} or stay in Iceland.”
Passengers were put up in hotels for the night and the plane was grounded for maintenance.
WestJet spokesperson Lauren Stewart explained that Saturday’s declaration of an emergency was done out of caution, as it gave the flight priority landing and readied emergency vehicles on the ground, in case that was needed.
“The pilots did a great job of getting us down safely and that’s really all that matters,” Parker said.
Two flights were sent Sunday to retrieve passengers and return them both to Edmonton and Calgary directly. The Edmonton flight arrived around 7 p.m. while the Calgary flight touched down around 9 p.m.
“Everyone cheered when we actually took off from Reykjavik and we were all just grateful to be here {in Edmonton}.” Gaul said.
There’s still no word on what type of mechanical issue prompted the unscheduled stop.