Passenger Video Shows Plane Dumping Fuel Before Unplanned Landing

DENVER (CBS4) - Some Hawaii-bound airline passengers who were hoping to depart from Denver Friday morning instead had to spend most of the rest of the day waiting after their plane turned around shortly after takeoff.

The pilot of United Airlines Flight 328 told passengers after the plane departed from Denver International Airport Friday morning that he thought the plane's right engine had ingested a bird. Airline officials later said the exact nature of the apparent engine trouble the plane experienced wasn't known.

Some passengers said they heard a pop.

"There was no smoke, the plane didn't jolt other than we went in a direction other than we should have. We should have just gone west and we turned to the right and we were still at a very low altitude," said Mary Rehm.

Before making the unplanned return to DIA the plane dumped fuel for safety reasons for about 20 to 30 minutes. Some passengers captured video of the fuel streaming out from the right wing.

"The pilots were amazing," Sandra Mueller told CBS4. "They had to dump fuel because you can't land with that much fuel. And they explained everything that was going on to us. And they were able to stabilize the aircraft."

There were a string of grass fires spotted by Copter4 early Friday afternoon near the DIA runways that may have been caused somehow by the United plane.