JOHANNESBURG—A plane carrying the South African rugby team to a match in Australia suffered engine failure Friday and was forced to return to Johannesburg about two hours into the flight, officials said.
“The Qantas flight on which the team was travelling was forced to return to OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg less than two hours after takeoff following the overheating and failure of engine number three on their Boeing 747,” a South African Rugby Union (SARU) statement said.
SARU spokesman Andy Colquhoun added that all 28 players and the officials accompanying them were fine, but he was unsure when the team would fly to Sydney for the opening fixture of the annual southern hemisphere championships next Saturday.
Springboks captain and hooker John Smit described the experience on Twitter.
“Wow, just had to do an emergency landing at OR Tambo,” he tweeted. “We lost an engine after take-off but safely landed now!”
Assistant coach Gary Gold showed a humorous touch in another tweet:
“… irony also that there is a petrol strike in Johannesburg and we just dumped 65 tons of fuel to land. Our engine just blew on take-off and we returned to Johannesburg. Not much fun.”
Lock Alistair Hargreaves tweeted: “One of the engines just failed and we had to turn round. Beautiful start to the trip!”
Qantas said one of the Boeing 747’s four engines was shut down after it “experienced an increase in vibration and temperature”, and the plane turned back “as a precaution”.
“The aircraft has four engines and can safely fly on three engines,” a spokesman for the airline told AFP. “There was no issue with safety.”
A fresh plane would leave Sydney to collect the “special cargo” on Saturday afternoon, he added.
The Tri-Nations involves New Zealand, Australia and reigning world champions South Africa, who triggered controversy by leaving 21 mostly first-choice players behind because of injuries.
South Africa also took a severely depleted Tri-Nations side to Australasia in 2007 — the last time the world championship was staged — and went on to defeat England to lift the World Cup a record-equalling second time.