A plane was forced to return to Perth Airport on Tuesday after a fire broke out in one of its engines just moments into the flight.

Passengers have described seeing flames and smoke coming from the engine shortly after the plane took off at 10:30am (AWST).

About 90 fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers heading to Barrow Island were on board the Cobham Aviation aircraft.

The plane managed to turn around and land safely. An investigation is underway into how the engine caught fire.

Cobham Aviation Services said the four-engine BAE 146 jet returned to Perth Airport at 10:53am (AWST).

It said the aircraft was climbing after take-off when the fire occurred in engine number two on the inner port side of the plane.

Damage to the plane's engine. ( Audience submitted: Jason Grimmett )

"When the fire was detected, the engine was shut down and the fire extinguished," a statement from Cobham read.

It added there were no injuries among the 92 passengers, two pilots and three cabin crew.

Passenger Jason Grimmett said the incident happened about 10 minutes after the plane took off.

"I was sitting right next to the engine, it looks like something blew outside the engine," he said.

"Fuel started spewing out, caught alight - there was a bit of panic on board but the pilots were quite quick to react and cut fuel lines and then put it out.

"So we just turned around and came back in."

Mr Grimmett said most passengers remained calm as the four-engine plane returned to the terminal.

"There was a couple of guys that were panicking quite bad but we've still got three other engines, so unless something major goes wrong - [it was] just a bit of fuel caught alight."

Kewdale resident Craig Ablett witnessed the incident from the ground.

"I saw this plane fly over and I noticed one of the engines was on fire," he said.

"It had more or less just taken off.

"It's not every day you see a plane with its engine on fire flying over you.

"The flames coming out of the engine would have been 10, 20 metres long."

Another man said he arrived at the airport in a taxi just as the plane landed back on the ground.

"There was flames coming out of the left-hand side of the engine," he said.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was actually quite frightening."