PICTURE: Emirates and Rolls-Royce work to repair A330 at Lusaka

The Emirates flight between the Zambian capital and Dubai had to turn back after what is said by some witnesses to have been an uncontained blade failure in the port engine in the early hours of Monday morning.

It returned to Lusaka and landed safely with all passengers evacuated in an "efficient" manner.

A replacement engine was flown to Lusaka in an Atlas B747 - but handling the engine replacement created a technical nightmare for the engineers from Emirates and Rolls-Royce who had rushed to the southern African country to investigate the problem.

Sources on the ground say that there is no appropriate MRO facility at the airport and that the largest crane available in the country was called in to assist.