AN AIR France plane reportedly took a frightening 5,000ft nosedive after an engine burst into flames just minutes after take-off.
Terrified passengers feared they would be “smashed to pieces” during the shocking plummet on flight AF 7721 from Paris to Ajaccio.
Those onboard said they heard a loud bang in the cabin just 30 minutes after takeoff at around 6pm.
One traveller named Steven said everyone on the jet experienced “a lot of vibrations” before the haunting dive.
He said: “I thought it was a joke at first, then we realised it was serious.
“My wife next to me was scared. I put my seatbelt back on and tightened it really hard.
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“We’re in a tin can, we’re not in control, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Another woman traveling with her daughter told RTL she saw flames on the wing of the aircraft.
She said: “It was in flames.”
“The buttons, everything was lighting up, everything was flashing.
“There was a man who grabbed his children because they thought we were going to crash.”
She also told how she felt the aircraft “plummet” and watched in complete fear as chaos erupted among passengers.
The same flyer said she “thought we were going to be smashed to pieces”.
Passengers on the nightmare flight also said the captain explained to them that the left engine of the jet “stopped working mid-flight”.
But Air France called the incident a result of “engine failure”.
Moments after the harrowing plummet last weekend, the crew decided to divert the plane to Lyon.
An industry expert claimed it was a case of “engine surge”, where the crew is forced to “shut down the engine” due to air pockets forming within it which create vibrations, Le Parisien reported.
It is understood the landing in Lyon “went normally on a single engine”, according to the expert.
Despite passengers eventually making it to their destination safely, the female passenger who feared being smashed to pieces has announced she intends to file a complaint against Air France.
She described the effects of the heart-stopping fall.
The passenger claimed: “My eight-year-old granddaughter spent the night terrified of me, trembling all over, crying, and waking up from nightmares.”
The Sun reached out to Air France for comment.