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All photos courtesy of JetBlue Flight 1416 passenger Michelle Lizette Settergren.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating whether or not an airplane part found in Huntington Beach last Thursday was part of a failed engine on Jet Blue Flight 1416, FAA officials said today. 

The 26-inch-long rectangular part, called a C duct, was found by a Huntington Beach woman who saw it falling from the sky while riding her bicycle in the area of Pacific Coast Highway and Magnolia in Huntington Beach last Thursday, the same day that Flight 1416 experienced engine problems. 

The woman then placed the part in the basket of her bicycle and took it home before giving it to an FAA official.

“We have the part at our Long Beach Flight Standards District Office and plan to take it to Jet Blue today so they can look at it and determine whether it’s from their aircraft,” said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor.

City News Service contributed to this report.

UPDATE: Passengers Offer Firsthand Accounts of JetBlue Emergency Landing

9/18/14 1:30PM  |  Long Beach resident Michelle Lizette Settergren was on the flight, and shared her experience with the Post.

10570416 734684490063 8908014547201238036 n“I had a window seat, so I was looking out the window,” she said. “We were flying over downtown and then all of a sudden I started to smell something rank, just awful. The plane started to fill with smoke. Before you knew it, it was just gray and you couldn’t see anything.”

Settergren said many of the gas masks on the flight had trouble deploying, and no announcements were made about what was happening for several minutes.

“People were screaming and panicking. All of a sudden you just hear this whoosh sound and whatever motor was running stopped,” she said. “I thought, hands down, I was going to die. The pilot got on the intercom and said we had engine failure and we were heading back to Long Beach. That’s it. There was no reassurance that we would be okay. The plane had a lot of turbulence, and people were praying, crying and screaming.”

Actor Jackson Rathbone, best known for playing Jasper in the “Twilight” movies, was also a passenger on the flight. He live-tweeted the entire ordeal.

“We landed safely,” he tweeted. “It wasn’t even all that rough, honestly. I just couldn’t stop kissing my family and thanking my God.”

UPDATE: Long Beach Airport Main Runway Re-Opened After Forced Emergency Landing Causes Closure

12PM | The main runway of Long Beach Airport was shut down for about two hours today due to a Jet Blue flight experiencing an engine problem after takeoff.

JetBlue Flight 1416, which was going from Long Beach to Austin, took off from Long Beach Airport at about 9:05AM, but received an alert of an overheating engine while in the air at about 9:15AM, said Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Jake Heflin.

There was smoke on the No. 2 engine, Heflin said, and based on that, the pilot declared an in-flight emergency and landed the plane back at Long Beach Airport at about 9:29AM.

“At the time, they had smoke inside the cabin but not in the cockpit,” Heflin said. “They deployed fire extinguishing agents for the engines controlled by pilots and activated emergency evacuation upon landing.”

All 142 passengers and five crew members were evacuated on emergency slides and reunited with family and friends in the terminal.

“All the passengers were basically triaged on scene,” Heflin said.

Four people complained of medical issues, such as a tailbone injury and a wellness check, and one patient was transported to the hospital after complaints of shortness of breath. 

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Parts of Long Beach Airport Shut Down After JetBlue Flight Forced to Make Emergency Landing

10AM | The main runway of the Long Beach Airport has been shut down due to a Jet Blue flight experiencing an engine problem after takeoff, officials told City News Service.

The flight, which was going from Long Beach to Austin, returned to Long Beach Airport, where passengers were evacuated on emergency slides.

Julie Sone of ABC-7 tweeted an aerial pic, showing the airplane on the tarmac. CBS-2 has reported that four have been injured; of those, three have been treated and released and one has been transported to a nearby hospital.

The Post is awaiting a response from airport officials to get more details.