Pilots hailed as heroes

Cathay Pacific said in a statement the plane’s left engine had shut down as the aircraft made its landing approach at Hong Kong’s international airport on Tuesday with 309 passengers on a flight from Surabaya in Indonesia. The right engine also began to “cut out inexplicably, leaving the (pilots) to cope with dips and surges in power and the prospect of the plane plunging into the sea short of (the airport),” the South China Morning Post reported.

The emergency landing caused all four tyres on the left hand side of the plane to deflate, while two on the right side also deflated, the airline said. Passengers were evacuated on emergency inflatable slides. There were eight injuries.

“It was an amazing piece of piloting in extremely testing circumstances,” one colleague of the two Australian pilots said. “One engine was shut down completely and the other was going on and of. They effectively landed the plane on half an engine. Their stories will come out in due course when the investigation is complete.”