A Virgin Atlantic flight en route to Florida was forced to make an emergency landing in Manchester after crew smelled burning on the flight deck

The packed passenger plane returned to the city shortly after take-off with officials confirming the jumbo had a 'small technical fault' with an aircraft fan.

The Virgin Atlantic Flight VS75 left at about 11.30am, before landing at around 1pm.

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Grounded: The Virgin flight to Orlando had to return to Manchester because of technical issue

It had to dump fuel over the sea while flying at 19,000 feet and fire engines were put on standby on the runway.

People tracked its progress online with regular updates about its flight path and againwhen it safely landed.

Airport bosses say the plane had to return to the city because of a 'minor' technical problem, which was soon fixed on the tarmac.

Looks like a Virgin 747 has declared an Emergency not Long after departing Manchester. pic.twitter.com/kTHoU6VAZv — Dan (@DanielSander95) May 2, 2015

Passengers remained on board throughout and the flight was back in the air and on its way to America shortly after 4pm.

Forced return: Passengers stayed on board as engineers fixed the problem with a fan

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said the plane had returned to Manchester as a 'precautionary measure'.

'Due to a technical issue, our flight VS75 from Manchester to Orlando on 02 May, returned to Manchester as a precautionary measure,' she said.

'The flight landed normally into Manchester and was attended to by engineers before departing for Orlando at 3.30pm local time.