‘Thought we were going to die’

A United Airlines plane suffered a fiery engine failure yesterday shortly after taking off from Denver for Hawaii, dropping massive debris on a residential area before a safe emergency landing, officials said. 

A video shot from inside the aircraft -- which had 231 passengers and 10 crew onboard -- showed the right engine ablaze and wobbling on the wing of the Boeing 777-200, its cover entirely missing as the aircraft flew over a barren landscape.

There were no injuries on the plane or on the ground, authorities said. Most of the passengers have already headed to their destination by another plane. Few who refused to travel after the ordeal have been accommodated by the airlines. 

"I can honestly say I thought we were going to die at one point -- because we started dropping altitude right after the explosion," passenger David Delucia told The Denver Post.

"I grabbed my wife's hand and said, 'We're done.'"

In a recording of the distress call obtained from the website LiveATC, which broadcasts air traffic communications, the pilot requested emergency permission to turn back to Denver.

"Three-twenty-eight, uh, heavy. We've experienced engine failure, need to turn. Mayday, mayday," he said, without obvious panic in his voice.

"Mayday, aircraft, uh, just experienced engine failure," he said, after the tower asked him to repeat himself. "Need a turn immediately."

Meanwhile, residents in the Denver suburb of Broomfield found large pieces of the plane scattered around their community, including a giant circular piece of metal that landed in the yard of Kirby Klements.

"It was a little overwhelming," he told CNN.

"It landed square on top of my truck and fell off," he said, reporting that a separate large piece of debris had put a five-foot (1.5-meter) hole in a neighbor's roof.

United said it would "continue to work with federal agencies investigating this incident."

Heather Solar was running a practice at the park for her girls' soccer team when she said she heard an explosion, following by debris raining down.

"Honestly, what I thought it was at first... I thought we were being bombed," Solar told The Denver Post. "There was so much debris in the sky."