A passenger jet has made an emergency landing at Shannon Airport after suffering an engine problem over the Atlantic this morning.
The flight was forced to turn around and divert to Shannon, landing with just one of its two engines operating. It’s understood that the engine suffered a ‘compressor stall’ and that the crew shut the engine down as a precaution.
Jetblue flight JBU-2220 was travelling from London’s Heathrow Airport to New York/JFK at the time. The Airbus A321-271(Neo) jet was over the North Atlantic about two hours west of Ireland when the crew declared an emergency.
The brand new aircraft only entered service last month according to records.
The crew made contact with air traffic controllers in Shannon to advise them of their emergency. The crew confirmed they had shut down the aircraft’s No.2 engine and that they would require airport emergency services to be standing by for their arrival.
The crew also stated that their aircraft type did not have fuel dumping capability so they would be making an overweight landing but they expected the landing to be ‘normal’.
Shannon Airport’s own fire and rescue service was alerted while the local authority fire service, National Ambulance Service (NAS) and Gardaí were also requested to deployed resources to the airport.
Units of Clare County Fire and Rescue Service from Shannon and Ennis stations were dispatched to the airport along with several ambulances and other NAS response vehicles. Local Gardaí also attended at the airport.
Airport fire crews, backed up by local authority fire service vehicles, were deployed to designated holding positions adjacent to Shannon’s runway. The aircraft landed safety at 10.50am and was pursued along the runway by fire crews.
Fire crews accompanied the jet to the terminal where they remained for a time before being stood down. Fire crews inspected the jet’s landing gear to ensure it hadn’t overheated during the overweight emergency landing.
Engineers were expected to inspect the engine however it’s believed that a replacement aircraft will be sent to Shannon this afternoon to take the passengers onto their final destination.
