Passengers on a Malaysia Airlines plane flying from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur which was forced to land in the central Australian city of Alice Springs said they were bracing themselves for a possible hard landing after the plane shook violently on Thursday.

“We suddenly experienced a very violent shaking of the aircraft and that probably lasted about five minutes and it was coming from one of the engines,” passenger Hugh Wolton told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We got a call from the captain on the deck describing how to make plans for an emergency landing, you know, the wording used things like ‘impact,’ so we were suddenly bracing ourselves for a rough landing.”

Passenger Peter Brooks said the captain announced there would be “a couple of impacts” and some passengers thought the plane would come down in the desert. But about 45 minutes later the captain said they would land in Alice Springs, he said.

The airline said the Airbus A330-300 plane experienced a “technical fault” in one of its two engines and the pilot decided to divert the flight.

It said Flight 122, which had been flying close to the Western Australian state coastal town of Broome when it turned back, landed safely in Alice Springs and “safety was not at any time compromised.”

Passenger Cath Cat said the landing was ultimately smooth.

“We were aware of a sudden shuddering noise and then we were told to prepare for an emergency landing and there were instructions,” Cat told Nine Network television. “But later — fairly rapidly actually — the pilot said that the situation was under control and that we were returning to Alice Springs and although it was an emergency landing technically, it was going to be like a commercial landing, which in fact happened and we were all very grateful for that.”

The airline said passengers would spend the night in Alice Springs and then be flown to Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

Malaysia Airlines suffered two disasters in 2014. Flight 370 vanished in March 2014 with 239 people on board and Flight 17 carrying 298 people was shot down over Ukraine a few months later.

(AP)