A mechanical fault caused a plane wing to catch fire just moments before take-off, leading to operations at Adelaide Airport being temporarily shut down.

The Rex Airlines flight was accelerating down the runway at Adelaide Airport and was bound for Broken Hill just after 7am when passengers spotted the flames on the left engine.

That’s when the pilot suddenly braked. 

“The plane started to brake just before we rotated, and I thought ‘oh that’s not good’, and then someone started yelling out ‘fire, fire’, and I thought ‘oh that’s not good either’,” passenger Warwick Beverley said. 

Beverley and his fiancé Sandy Holmes were desperate to head home after his emergency brain surgery to remove a tumour in Adelaide.

Today, they were left with “another story to tell”. 

The plane came to a stop on the runway and passengers and staff were ushered off the aircraft.

A bus picked them up from the airport and took them back to the terminal, where they were booked on another flight.

Firefighters battled the flames.

“I’m glad it wasn’t in the air,” Holmes said. 

“I hate flying anyway so I had to really tell myself I was on the riverbank because my heart was jumping out of my chest.”

The situation impacted operations across the entire airport, with the runway closed for about 30 minutes before reopening about 8am. 

Rex Airlines claims a small amount of unburnt fuel ignited in the engine’s exhaust, causing the emergency. 

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating the mechanical fault.