A United Airlines flight originating in San Diego has been forced to make an emergency landing in New Mexico, after an engine malfunction caused flames to shoot out of an engine.

The flight was on its way to Chicago when it was forced to make an emergency landing in Albuquerque, where it safely made it to the ground.

The airline then found a different plane to finish the route.

One passenger on the flight tweeted a video of flames coming out of the right wing’s engine.

“Strange to sit there & think ‘What if this is it?’ To just sit there & accept the potential fate that seems to be a possibility & not tell the sleeping people all around you,” wrote Thomas Chorny, a passenger who said he was in seat 34F. “No need to panic the others. I’m a pretty calm person but took me a while to stop the shakes & trembles.”

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Mr Chorny later spoke to CNN, and described an ordinary flight turned into horror.

“The plane started to shake a bit like it was hitting turbulence, but the wings were perfectly still. I was halfway falling asleep but opened my eyes to look out the window and saw flames shooting from the right engine,” he told the news network. “They shut down the engine to idle, and the flames went out and then they started banking left for quite a while and we dropped a bunch of altitude. It took another 10 minutes or so before they announced that we would be landing at Albuquerque.”

He continued: “It's a strange feeling to sit there not knowing exactly what was going on, but it was very easy to start getting emotional just thinking about what might have happened.”