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A Qantas Airways A380 has landed safely in Singapore after running into engine trouble shortly after it had left the island state en route for Sydney.
Fire engines immediately swarmed the aircraft as soon is it landed on the tarmac on Changi Airport on Thursday.
The aircraft, carrying 459 people, suffered trouble with one of its four engines, in one of the most serious incidents for the world's largest passenger plane in its three years of commercial flight.
Australian officials said no one on board was injured.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, said the aircraft circled Singapore airport before it made a successful emergency landing.
"The 433 passengers have safely landed after two hours of very scary moments in the air," she said.
Mid-air explosion
Initial media reports said the plane had crashed after an explosion over the Indonesian island of Batam near Singapore.
"A piece of debris came down from the sky after witnesses reported a mid-air explosion over Batam," our correspondent said.
A witness in Batam, told Indonesia's Metro TV: "After an explosion, the plane was still moving but smoke was trailing from one of its wings."
One of the four nacelles - structures that house the engines - was missing and there appeared to be charring around that area of the plane.
Qantas, which operates six A380s, said it was grounding the aircraft pending a full investigation.
"We will suspend all A380 takeoffs until we are fully confident we have sufficient information about (flight) QF32," Alan Joyce, Qantas' chief executive officer, told reporters in Sydney.
There have been no fatal incidents involving A380s since they were launched in 2005 amid great fanfare as the greenest, quietest - as well as the biggest - jetliner.
Earlier this year, one of the planes operated by Qantas burst two tires when landing in Sydney and in September 2009 an A380 was forced to turn around in mid-flight and return to Paris.
"This is probably the most serious incident involving the A380 since it began flying in commercial service," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent of Orient Aviation magazine, said.
"There have been minor engine incidents before but nothing like this."
Qantas has never had a fatal accident. A mid-air explosion blew a minivan-size hole in the side of a Qantas 747-400 in 2008 which Australian air safety investigators blamed on an oxygen bottle.
The A380 has been bedeviled with production delays. More than 200 orders have been placed for the aircraft, and 37 are in operation worldwide, according to Airbus.
Qantas said the incident did not impact its standing orders for more A380s.
PHOTO CAPTION
Qantas Airways A-380 passenger plane QF32 with its partially damaged engine sits on the tarmac after making an emergency landing at Changi airport in Singapore November 4, 2010.
Al-Jazeera
