( CNN ) -- Brendon Pelser said he saw pure terror in the faces of his fellow passengers after an engine fell from a wing as it took off from Cape Town , South Africa , Wednesday . Men were sweating profusely , women were crying . `` There was fear on their faces , '' Pelser said . `` Everyone started panicking . '' But the pilot of Nationwide Airlines ' Boeing 737 Flight CE723 was able to fly long enough to dump fuel and make an emergency landing at Cape Town International Airport . Including crew , 100 hundred people were on the plane that departed at 3:50 p.m. on an hourlong flight to Johannesburg , South Africa . No one was injured . The jet had only been in the air about 10 minutes before the engine fell . `` We heard something crash and bang , the plane veering left and right . A person on the right side said the engine was missing -- had broken clean off , '' said Pelser . Watch Pelser describe how the flight crew told passengers to `` prepare for the worst '' » . `` They flew us in very slowly . We were all prepared for the worst . We went into the fetal position , head between the legs , '' he said . `` Then we hit the runway . '' `` I did kind of pray . I did n't want to die . I 'm not really ready to die , '' the 33-year-old said . An object had been sucked into the engine as the nose wheel lifted from the ground and officials are trying to identify it . The engine-to-wing supporting structure is designed to release an engine `` when extreme forces are applied , '' to prevent structural damage to the wing , Nationwide said on its Web site . The airline described the incident as a `` catastrophic engine failure . '' As the nose wheel lifted from the ground , `` the captain heard a loud noise immediately followed by a yaw of the aircraft ( sideways slippage ) to the right , '' the airline said in a news release . The flight instruments showed the No . 2 engine on the right side had failed , it said . Pelser said he spent the night in Cape Town , then flew back to Johannesburg where he lives , on the same airline . Nationwide said the engine had undergone a major overhaul in March 2005 at `` an approved Federal Aviation Authority facility in the U.S.A. '' and had flown only 3,806 hours since then . `` These engines typically achieve 10,000 hours between major overhauls , '' Nationwide Airlines ' press release stated . E-mail to a friend .
Nationwide Airlines pilot dumped fuel until he landed plane Wednesday . An object was sucked into the engine as the nose wheel lifted from the ground . The plane crashed in a field near New York City, killing all 49 people on board. Plane passenger : `` Everyone started panicking ''