Terror on board Air France jet as plane plummets ‘nose first’ 5,000ft within minutes after engine explodes setting ‘wing on fire’ and leaving passengers fearing they would be ‘smashed to pieces’

Horrified passengers feared they would be ‘blow apart’ when their jet’s engine exploded while flying over France and the plane plummeted to the ground ‘nose first’ within minutes.

Passengers on flight AF 7721 from Paris to Ajaccio experienced a nightmare situation when their plane had to divert due to a technical incident.

Just 30 minutes after takeoff, at around 6pm, passengers said they heard a loud bang in the cabin, with one passenger named Steven adding that he experienced ‘lots of vibration’.

“At first I thought it was a joke, then we realized it was serious,” he added.

‘My wife next to me was scared. I put my seat belt back on and tightened it securely. ‘We’re in a tin can, we’re not in control, we don’t know what’s going to happen.’

Christelle, a woman traveling with her daughter, told RTL she witnessed the fire on the wing of the plane, saying: ‘It was in flames.’

He added that he felt the plane ‘falling’ and watched chaos break out among the passengers.

‘The buttons, everything was on fire, everything was flashing. There was a man who grabbed his kids because they thought we were going to crash,” Christelle said.

Another woman, Joelle, added that she ‘thought we were going to fall apart.’

Passengers said the captain announced that the plane’s left engine had “stopped working mid-flight.”

However, Air France described the incident as ‘engine failure’.

According to Le Parisien, an industry expert explained that this was a case of “engine surge” in which the crew had to “shut down the engine” after air pockets formed inside it, creating vibrations.

The crew eventually decided to divert the plane to Lyon during this weekend’s incident.

The airline stated that the decision was taken ‘in accordance with the manufacturer’s procedures, the company’s instructions and the precautionary principle’.

The passengers had to take another flight at 10.40pm, which took them to Bastia, and from there they took a bus to Ajaccio, arriving there at 3am.

According to the expert, the landing in Lyon ‘normally occurred with one engine’.

The crew eventually decided to divert the plane to Lyon during this weekend’s incident.

Landing in Lyon ‘normally occurred with one engine’, according to expert

Although it is not customary to fly with a single engine, “such things happen in the air transportation world,” he said.

Despite the passenger statements, the expert added that ‘the wing was not on fire, the engine was not on fire, there was no fire alarm’.

However, he admitted that he could not rule out the possibility of momentary flames in the nozzle ‘located inside the engine’.

The Airbus A320 operating the flight contains two CFM56 engines, which the expert claims are among the ‘most reliable’ engines worldwide.

Despite the passengers arriving safely at their destination, Joelle announced her intention to file a complaint against Air France.

He described the effects of the incident as follows: ‘My 8-year-old grandson spent the night afraid of me, shaking all over, crying and waking up from nightmares.’