ORLANDO, Fla. -- A flight from Belfast to Orlando took a frightening turn when the plane’s engine started to malfunction Friday night. The Airbus A3-30 jet was forced to make an emergency landing in Norfolk, Virginia during a 4,000 mile trip.

The flight finally made it to Orlando Sanford International Airport hours later.

The Thomas Cook Airlines direct flight was traveling from Belfast, Ireland with 265 passengers aboard when something went wrong.

“All you could hear was this loud, amazing roaring,” Christine Randall, eyewitness, said. “It was insane.”

The pilot detected vibrations in one of the aircraft’s engines. He shut the engine down 60 miles out over the Atlantic Ocean.

“It didn’t sound like a normal engine,” Randall said. “It was clackity, clackity, like there was something inside.”

The pilot brought the plane down safely in Norfolk. All the passengers onboard were loaded onto another plane to make the final leg of the trip to Central Florida.’

A spokesman for Thomas Cook Airlines said the engine was shut down as a precautionary measure. The aircraft landed normally and no passengers were at risk, airline officials said.

The airline is investigating exactly what caused the vibration problem. The passengers and their families said they were just glad to have arrived home safely.