Air France superjumbo with 500 on board makes emergency landing after part of engine falls off

Flight from Paris to Los Angeles lands in Canada after engine failure

An Air France Airbus A380, the world's largest civilian airliner (Getty)

An Air France plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Canada on Saturday after sustaining “serious damage” to one of its engines.

The flight was carrying nearly 500 passengers and 24 crew members from Paris to Los Angeles.

"Flight 066 landed without further damage at the Goose Bay military airport in Canada and all of the 520 people on board were evacuated with no injuries," an Air France spokesman in Paris told Agence France-Presse.

Images posted on social media appear to show serious damage to the engine of the plane.

"The regularly trained pilots and cabin crew handled this serious incident perfectly," the airline said in a statement.

“An investigation is currently underway to shed light on this serious incident with representatives from the BEA (French Aviation Accident Investigation Bureau), the aircraft manufacturer Airbus and Air France.”

It is unlikely the incident was caused by a collision with a bird as the failure took place at a very high altitude, one aviation analyst said on Twitter.

It occurred during cruise, therefore too high for bird strike. Investigation started & latest from Air France here: https://t.co/skfddLHKnT https://t.co/jr5o3yD1Nz

— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) September 30, 2017

One passenger told the Canadian broadcaster CTV the pilot had announced the engine failure after a loud noise.

"We heard a loud pop, and we had a quick descent along with some vibration. It definitely was not turbulence so we knew something was wrong," the passenger said.

"The captain was able to recover the plane quite fast, however, we were definitely nervous because the vibrating was probably occurring a good five to eight minutes."

Passengers were stranded for 12 hours in Goose Bay, Canada, because the small airport is not equipped to deal with large jets like the A380.

The passengers were eventually re-routed on a plane to Los Angeles via Atlanta.