TROWBRIDGE rugby players Tom Coombs and Shai Bonnick are among passengers who have praised the pilot of an Airbus A320, after he had to abort a landing at Perth airport before eventually landing safely.

Tom and Shai, who both grew up in Trowbridge and played for the Trowbridge first team, with Tom among the players who helped the club lift the RFU Intermediate Cup at Twickenham last season, are in Australia on a working break during which they are playing rugby for Perth. They had travelled with the club to Bali to compete in a tournament, and were returning home when the drama happened.

Tom told the Wiltshire Times: "Our first notification that something was wrong was when the main flight attendant told us that there was slight issues with the braking system. Naturally we all started running the worst possible scenario through our heads.

"We then went to land and got fairly close to the runway and the pilot jolted the plane near vertical and aborted the landing as the brakes still weren't working. After circling above and around the airport for 45 mins we final went back down to land.

"The pilot also prior to this said that he would try and land the plane as normally as possible. People reacted badly to this, people started being sick and panicking slightly. The initial landing was fine, but we still had no brakes so we were still going way too fast down the runway.

"Luckily the brake system kicked back in and we stopped shortly after. This was followed by cheers and clapping. Emergencies were all in standby for support when we got into the airport. Cabin crew and pilot all we were excellent during the whole ordeal.

"We were playing a 10s tournament in Bali we got to the cup final of and lost unfortunately."

According to Australian media reports, the pilot of Jetstar flight JQ117 noticed a brake malfunction warning light and aborted the landing moments before touching down, sending the aircraft climbing steeply away from the runway, in a rollercoaster manoeuvre designed to avert a disaster. 

Airport fire crews and back-up metropolitan units were directed to the international runway at about 11.30am Australian time, as the jet circled the airport. It landed safely shortly before noon.

Shai was among passengers interviewed by Australian TV after the flight landed.

Fellow passenger Beau Stone, 14, who was travelling along on the flight, and has been talking to the press in Australia, saying: “It was normal to start off with until we took off really quickly when we ditched the landing, it threw you back into your seat pretty hard.

“It was pretty much vertical straight away instantly, we were tilting a bit and doing a lot of circles and they talked about landing at the RAAF bases and then about an emergency runway.”

Jetstar have released a statement saying the pilot had requested a "clear runway" after noticing a brake indicator fault on the flight deck controls.

"Air traffic control asked the captain to conduct a holding pattern until the runway could be cleared for landing," the statement said.

"Following a short period of holding, the captain landed the aircraft safely.

"There was no issue with the aircraft braking system during the landing."