Onlookers from around Queenstown have described the terrifying moment a plane carrying nearly 70 passengers caught fire shortly after takeoff.
The Melbourne-bound Virgin Australia flight, a Boeing 737-800, experienced an issue shortly after taking off from Queenstown Airport on Monday evening.
The plane diverted and landed safely in Invercargill after flames were seen shooting from one of its engines.
There were 67 guests and six crew on board at the time.
Onlookers from the ground have described seeing and hearing loud explosions.
Former MP Hamish Walker appeared on Australia's 7 News, where he described hearing the plane catch fire.
"It was literally like a car exploding right outside my window every second… and I looked up and it's actually a plane," he said.
"I've never heard anything like it before."
Eden Brackstone was about 2km from Queenstown Airport when he too described hearing a loud bang "echoing off of the hills".
"I thought it was either an extremely loud car or subwoofer," he told 1News. "It was one of the loudest things I've ever heard in this neighbourhood."
Another witness, Nick Lambert, told NZ Herald about the noise he heard overhead.
"It was making one hell of a pulsing/throbbing noise out of one engine then it was shooting flames out - maybe hit a bird?" he said.
Passengers on-board the flight are claiming a bird strike may have been responsible for the incident.
In an email to Newshub, a man who said he was travelling on flight VA148 claimed birds had struck the left engine.
"The captain told us that there was a bird strike on the left engine and the plane was shaking up and down, [we] have just landed at Invercargill with lots of ambulances and fire crew," he told Newshub.
Virgin Australia chief operations officer Stuart Aggs later confirmed a bird strike may have triggered the flames.
He added that all passengers have disembarked and there are currently no reports of injuries.
"Emergency services personnel are on the ground at Invercargill Airport," Aggs said.
"Our efforts are now focused on providing support for our guests and crew, as well as transporting and accommodating guests in Invercargill this evening and arranging for their earliest onward travel to Australia."
The Civil Aviation Authority website says "New Zealand is doing fairly well with bird avoidance", noting, its bird strike rate at airports is about four in 10,000 aircraft movements.
Queenstown Airport's chief executive Glen Sowry believes a large bird must have been involved in the incident.
"If you get a bigger bird that is ingested into an engine, which looks probable that this is what may have occured on this occasion, then depending on where abouts through the engine it goes it can do quite significant damage to critical parts of the engine."
But he told RNZ's Morning Report a bird strike couldn't be confirmed until the engine was inspected by engineers.
He said a runway inspection was carried out just minutes before the Virgin Australia flight left - it detected no birds.
However, there has been confirmed bird strikes involving smaller birds at the airport in the past month.
"There's a tremendous amount of effort goes into managing the risk of bird strikes and to do that we put a lot of effort into everything as simple as making sure that grass at the airport is kept short, there's no standing water, so making it as unattractive a place for birds to be as we can," Sowry said.
Sowry said it was the pilot's call to divert and land in Invercargill, but that there was no reason it couldn't safely land in Queenstown.
While it would have been scary on-board, well-wishers nervous from afar have taken to social media to share their relief at news the plane landed safely in Invercargill.
"Thank goodness it is safely landed," one person said, while another said they were "thrilled".
"What a blessing," one person commented.
The first bus of travellers from Invercargill was expected to arrive in Queenstown at 12pm on Tuesday.
Those on the original flight are being put on two planes out of Queenstown - QF178 to Melbourne at 2:05pm and VA118 to Brisbane at 4:30pm.
The ordeal comes after a similar incident earlier this month when a plane took off from Toronto en route to Paris.
Video shows flames shooting from an Air Canada Boeing jet as it took off, forcing it to abruptly turn around for an emergency landing.
"We've got an engine fire - holy shit," a man filming the ordeal could be heard saying.
