Elliot Yeo has described the moment one of the engines failed while the club was their way to Melbourne last Friday ahead of Sunday’s MCG clash with Richmond (the game he ended up severely injuring his hamstring).
Yeo exclusively told 96FM that throughout the flight he’d noticed that the plane’s engine was “sort of rattling a bit” but chalked it up to it simply being a different plane than the team had previously been used to.
Yeo previously told us he isn’t usually fazed by mid-flight disturbances like turbulence or loud noises, often laughing it off – and this seemed to be no different.
Except it was different.
Engine failure on the @WestCoastEagles flight to Melbourne today.
All safe and well, pilots are trained to handle these situations, but scary none the less.
The blue line is the change in altitude, deliberately by the pilot to land safely. pic.twitter.com/x7FYLjbEFO
— Will Schofield (@WillSchofield) July 1, 2022
“We were about an hour out of Melbourne and, all of a sudden, we heard this ‘bang!’”
“For about a minute or two, you’d hear this vibration come through,” he said before making a drumbeat-like roaring sound.
“You’d hear nothing, then it would go again ten seconds later.”
Yeo said it sounded as if the pilot was trying to restart the engine.
“All of a sudden, I saw this flash with all the electrical work and I thought, ‘oh, this might not be too good’.”
He continued.
“Then about a minute later, the pilot comes over the PA was like, ‘yeah, so we just lost a right engine but don’t worry guys, the left one is still fine, we have priority of the runway when we get to Melbourne, we’re trained to do this’.”
He said that the plane descended quickly, but added that it was precautionary, controlled descent – not something sudden.
After they landed, Yeo said he Googled: ‘how far can a plane glide without engines?’
“I was thinking we might’ve landed in the port of Melbourne there at one stage,” he joked.
West Coast will face Carlton this Sunday at Optus Stadium.
