Moments of agony unfolded in the Washington skies a few days ago when the pilot of a United Airlines plane carrying 219 passengers on a flight to Germany sounded a distress call when he detected a left engine failure minutes after takeoff from Dulles Airport.

The Flight 108 had taken off at 6 p.m. July 25 from Washington, D.C., bound for Germany on an 8-hour flight.

The pilot noticed the problem in the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner‘s engine when the plane was at 10,000 feet.

Air traffic controllers instructed the pilot to turn northeast and return to Dulles Airport.

However, because the plane was full of fuel for the long flight, the pilot deemed it too heavy to land and requested space and time to circle around in order to dump the fuel.

It eventually took 30 minutes to complete this process and the plane landed safely.

An airline official called it a “mechanical failure” without giving further details about the exact problem on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.