An air stewardess traumatised by a mid-air engine fire has been awarded more than £115,000 in compensation by British Airways.

Lucy Sargeant was working on board the flight from Heathrow Airport to Oslo in May 2013 when an engine caught fire. The A319 Airbus had to return for an emergency landing.

Panicked flight crew and 75 passengers had to evacuate from the plane via a jet chute after landing at the airport in stormy weather.

The engine fire started when “the engine fan cowl cover doors of both engines became detached and fell off during take-off”, said Miss Sargeant's lawyer, Nicholas Yell.

“This caused a fuel leak, a fire in the engines, and necessitated an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport,” he said.

The 29-year-old Uxbridge resident told Central London County Court that she believed she was going to die but had to put on a brave face for the other passengers.

“I felt so helpless being in a plane that was on fire and I feared the worst,” she told Judge Robert Glancy QC.

“But despite all that I had to retain an aura of calm on the outside for the benefit of the passengers.

The flight from Heathrow to Oslo was forced to turn back for an emergency landing in stormy conditions

“All I was concerned about was us all getting out of the aeroplane successfully. But inside I was terrified.”

Initially asking for £750,000 from Biritish Airways Plc, the former air stewardess said she was forced to quit "the most wonderful job", adding that the ordeal left her with an overwhelming sense of "dread" every time she flew.

She returned to work in 2014 but took voluntary redundancy a few months after an incident in 2016 when fumes leaked into a cabin while she was board.

The judge deemed that Miss Sargeant would have continued to work for BA until she was 60 and awarded her £115,027 for the loss of her job.

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