Rattled passengers were told not to take photos as fuel streamed out of the wings of an Air New Zealand jet bound for Los Angeles.
Flight NZ6, with 365 people on board, was forced to turn back about 20 minutes after leaving Auckland on Saturday night when the pilots were unable to retract the landing gear.
"People were pretty calm, but there were a few nervous moments there when they started dumping fuel," a passenger told The Dominion Post.
"It looked like it was raining down, it was streaming from the wings. They were telling people to stop taking photos, I'm not sure why."
The pilot told passengers a sensor in the cockpit had gone off and that they were going to dump fuel before returning to Auckland.
"They said that was why the plane was vibrating so much, because of the drag of the landing gear," the passenger said. "We flew around for about an hour then they landed again. Nobody was in the brace position or anything, it was a routine landing."
Another passenger, David Duignan, told Radio New Zealand many people applauded when the plane landed safely.
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