A Virgin Atlantic 747 with 320 passengers on board had to turn back with technical problems soon after taking off for Barbados and make a precautionary landing at Gatwick.

Staff were put on alert for a full emergency landing at 10.47am after the pilot reported problems.

The plane landed at 11.08am and was directed to a remote part of the airport. The full level emergency was downgraded at 11.28am and the emergency services stood down at 11.35am. Passengers began disembarking shortly afterwards.

A Virgin spokesman said an investigation into the problem was taking place and the company was doing what it could to transfer passengers to Barbados today.

"Whatever fault there was on the aircraft, the pilot would have had a good reason for turning back," the spokesman said. "We are now investigating why."

The incident comes days after the Madrid air disaster in which 153 people died. The Spanair flight was bound for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

It was reported yesterday that Spanish investigators believe a chain of faults, rather than a single engine failure, probably caused the air crash - Spain's worst in 25 years.

Police and investigators were today questioning the mechanic who cleared the plane for takeoff after tending to a minor mechanical problem.

Spanair said the mechanic dealt with a problem in an air temperature gauge that forced the pilot to abandon a first attempt to take off.

The newspaper El Pais quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that during two sessions of testimony Friday — first with police and then with crash investigators — the mechanic insisted that the gauge malfunction was a minor glitch which had nothing to do with Wednesday's crash.

A Spanair official said it had no details of the man's testimony, but reiterated that the mechanical problem did not cause the crash.The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing company rules.

Aviation experts have also said this problem probably did not cause the crash.

All 19 survivors of the crash remain hospitalised today, two of them in critical condition. The worst off was a 31-year-old woman with burns to 72 percent of her body. Her husband died in the crash but her six-year-old son survived.

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