A Batik Air flight bound for Bali was forced to make an emergency landing at Melbourne Airport on Tuesday morning after an engine failed during take-off. The aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX, departed Melbourne for Denpasar but turned around shortly after departure.
Emergency crews were on standby as the plane burned off fuel over Melbourne’s outer suburbs before landing safely. Passengers reported the take-off felt unusual, with the aircraft failing to gain altitude. One passenger told 7News, “I kind of started to doze and then I get a little bit of a nudge from him going, ‘we’re not going very high, something’s wrong here’.”
Many passengers on board were school leavers heading to Bali for celebrations. The same aircraft model was involved in two fatal crashes involving Lion Air in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines in 2019, though those incidents were linked to the flight control system, not the engine.
Batik Air has not yet commented on the incident. The aircraft returned to Melbourne without further incident, and no injuries were reported.
