British Airways travellers reveal nerves as mayday call made and plane returns to Sydney Airport

Passengers on board an international flight that made an emergency landing at Sydney Airport after a mayday call say the ordeal was “really, really scary”.

The Singapore-bound British Airways flight BA16 issued the highest possible distress signal a pilot can send about an hour after take-off on Monday and the plane was turned around.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: British Airways flight makes emergency landing in Sydney.

“Mayday Speed Bird 16. I’m just about to come fully established on 34 left. We will have to stop for a minute after landing,” the pilot said during one call to base before landing.

In response, an air traffic controller at Sydney Airport said: “G’day, copy, mayday acknowledged.”

Passengers on the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner said screens and lights began switching off.

“We heard the captain say we need a senior crew member to come to the cockpit now, and then we started thinking there’s something wrong,” Mandy Ramson told 7NEWS.

About 10 minutes later, she said they were told “we’re going to have to turn around because they smelt fuel in the cockpit”.

“It was scary, it was really scary,” she said.

Other passengers said the cabin was calm and chilled, but many were nervous. One said there was only a faint smell of fuel.

“They didn’t tell us anything. The plane behaved quite normally and the pilot got down quite easily. So it was pretty good,” Paul Van Ruggu said.

British Airways said the decision to turn around was done as a “precaution” after reports of a technical issue.

The aircraft landed safely just before 4pm, where it was met by emergency services including aviation fire trucks.

“The flight landed safely with crew and customers disembarking as they normally would, and our teams are working hard to get their journeys back on track as soon as possible,” an airline spokesperson said.

Customers were re-booked on other flights.

Sydney Airport said there was no impact to operations.