An Air Canada flight from Edmonton to Toronto landed safely at Pearson airport Sunday morning after the crew was forced to make a mayday call.

The Airbus 320 was carrying 87 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants when an indicator light came on suggesting there was a problem with the flight controls.

“Our crew is well trained to handle these events and followed procedures by declaring an emergency,” confirmed a spokesperson from Air Canada via email. “We are currently taking care of our customers and maintenance is inspecting the aircraft.”

Calgary resident Monique Auffrey boarded the flight with her husband around 12:30 a.m. Sunday and expected to be in Toronto before 7 a.m. She had fallen asleep and said she was surprised that the plane hadn’t begun its descent when she woke up.

All of a sudden the captain came on the PA system and made a request for someone to call the flight deck, said Auffrey.

The flight attendants started to scurry around and she began to worry, she said.

“I looked at my husband and he said ‘there’s something wrong.’ After that the flight attendants came on and said that we would be making an emergency landing.”

Auffrey said they were told there were problems with the landing gear. “They told us that they were having mechanical [issues], I think they even mentioned the flaps weren’t coming up.”

The plane circled over Lake Ontario for a brief time before making the emergency landing at Pearson.

“No one knew what kind of situation it was going to be,” she said. “That was the scariest part, having to go down.”

Auffrey was appreciative that the entire crew remained calm while they coached the passengers through the event.

Robert Kokonis, president and managing director of AirTrav Inc. aviation consulting firm, said he wasn’t able to comment on the seriousness of the distress call, but said there are a variety of different problems that could have caused it.

“These things happen more frequently than you know,” added Kokonis.

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“The primary mandate of all carriers is safe operations,” he said, and as part of their standard operating procedure Air Canada made the mayday call.

Emergency services met the plane at the Toronto airport once it had landed safely around 7:10 a.m.

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