Second Boeing plane drops engine parts

An incident involving a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane that dropped engine parts after a mid-air explosion and fire over the southern Netherlands is under investigation, the Dutch Safety Board said.

The Longtail Aviation cargo plane, flight 5504, scattered mostly small metal parts over the Dutch town of Meerssen, causing damage to cars and injuring one woman shortly after take-off on Saturday, local media said.

The Boeing cargo flight, which was supposed to fly from the Netherlands to New York, used a Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine - a smaller version of one on the United Airlines Boeing 777 involved in a separate incident in the United States on Saturday.

Boeing said that it was recommending airlines halt flights of some older, PW4000-powered versions of its 777 airliner pending inspections after UA Flight 328, bound for Honolulu from Denver, suffered an engine fire after take-off and scattered debris over Denver.

"Our investigation is still in a preliminary phase, it is too early to draw conclusions," the Dutch board said.

Witnesses said they saw fire in one of the engines of the plane, which landed safely at Liege airport in Belgium, some 30 kilometers south of Maastricht.