This is the terrifying moment fuel began leaking from a Birmingham-bound plane in the skies above Italy.

The Thomas Cook Boeing 757 was forced to make an emergency landing 30 minutes after taking off from Turin’s Caselle Airport.

A wave of panic spread throughout the plane after hundreds of gallons of fuel started pouring from the wing.

Passengers, many of them half-term holiday skiers, spotted the trail of liquid streaming from the right-hand side of the airliner shortly after take-off on Sunday afternoon.

The captain was forced to make an announcement about the emergency landing to the 231 people on board Flight 5739.

The jet aircraft eventually landed safely at Birmingham International Airport at 9.30pm yesterday.

Passengers were put up in an Italian hotel overnight after engineers from Birmingham were dispatched to Turin to fix the leak, which was blamed on a faulty valve.

The pilot had to circle the runway at Turin for 30 minutes before it could land safely as firefighters waited on stand-by. Some terrified passengers said they were worried that there would not be enough fuel even to get back to Turin.

One passenger, who did not wish to be named, said: “The pilot immediately came on the public address and explained what was going on, but some people were worried that because of the amount of fuel leaking there wasn’t enough to get back to Turin.

“In the end the plane landed safely and the pilot and crew were fantastic. There was a big cheer and a round of applause from everyone once we were back on the ground.”