An Air Canada flight bound for Toronto made an emergency at Madrid’s International Airport yesterday, after a reported tire rupture an engine issue and. Earlier in the day, the airport was closed for over an hour due to the reported sighting of drones.

Air Canada’s Toronto-bound Boeing 767-300 carrying 128 passengers and eight crew touched down safely after circling southeast of Adolfo Suarez-Barajas airport for four hours “to use up fuel and lighten the aircraft for landing,” Air Canada said.

The engine issue occurred shortly after takeoff in Madrid, the airline said in a statement. “A tire also reportedly ruptured on take-off, one of 10 on this model of aircraft.”

A spokesman for Spanish airport operator AENA said the pilot radioed the tower about 30 minutes after takeoff to request a slot for emergency landing.

“Our pilots are fully trained for this eventuality,” Air Canada said in an email. “Nonetheless, an emergency was declared in order to obtain landing priority.”

Spain’s Defence Ministry said an F-18 fighter jet was dispatched from a military airport near the Spanish capital to evaluate the damage done to the landing gear of Air Canada Flight 837.

A spokesman for Enaire, Spain’s air navigation authority, said the plane’s landing gear did not fold up properly after taking off and that a piece of it may have damaged part of one of the engines.

Benoit Gauthier, a retired Air Canada pilot, said defective wheels are “very rare…I was with Air Canada 37 years, and I think we ended up having a flat tire once.”

He said the tire rupture and engine problem are “most likely” connected.

“When a tire ruptures on takeoff, there’s always a remote chance that it explodes and some part of the rubber ends up in the engine,” he said in a phone interview.

The engine issue likely triggered the return to airport, while using up fuel makes for a lighter load on a plane that lacks the power of its second turbine, Gauthier said.

“If you’ve lost an engine, you don’t want to cross the Atlantic. You want to land,” he said.

All passengers were provided with hotel rooms and will be rebooked on other flights, Air Canada said.

Spain’s El Mundo newspaper’s website published audio that it said featured the plane’s pilot explaining to the passengers the need to return to Madrid because a wheel had been damaged during the takeoff.

“Because we are a bit too heavy, we have to get rid of fuel before being able to land,” the voice can be heard saying in Spanish.