Audio captures harrowing 'Mayday' call during emergency on Toronto flight

An Air Canada flight from Toronto to San Francisco made an emergency landing while battling in-flight engine issues, and the flight audio shows just how cool and collected the pilots remained with passengers' lives on the line.

Air Canada flight 743 departed Toronto Pearson International Airport for San Francisco International Airport on July 31, and had made it most of the way there when the Airbus A320 began to encounter issues.

The aircraft's number one engine produced vibration and was experiencing stalls, while fumes and smoke had made their way into the cabin full of passengers. At that point, pilots shut down the problem engine and declared "Mayday" to air traffic controllers, indicating an in-flight emergency and prompting a ground response at San Francisco Airport.

The pilot can be heard on the audio recording explaining, "we had an engine stalled followed by an engine failure with smell of smoke. So we shut down the engine. So there is a potential damage of the engine."

Pilots aligned the plane for an instrument-assisted approach at San Francisco Airport's runway 28R, where they landed safely and were met by emergency crews.

The aircraft involved in the incident remained on the ground following the emergency landing, but was returned to service on August 5.

blogTO has reached out to Air Canada for comment on the incident.