SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - An Air Canada Jazz flight to Yellowknife from Vancouver turned around nearly halfway through the two-hour and 25 minute flight because of an electrical problem Saturday evening.

Brad Hussey was on the plane heading home for the Christmas holidays with his wife and brother. They had already been delayed in the Vancouver International Airport for about eight hours when they boarded flight 8225 with 42 other passengers.

Hussey, a 22-year-old Yellowknife resident and student of Capilano University in Vancouver, B.C., said the first sign of a problem was the smell of smoke.

"We got up in the air and about forty minutes in we started smelling smoke, and, you know, that's never really a good thing to smell on the plane," he said.

The smell was quite strong, so he started looking around to find the source.

"Then I saw these sparks right above my seat where the lights and the wires were," he said. "I just started watching it out of curiosity."

While he watched, Hussey noticed a light bulb in the overhead passenger light system short out, causing a cloud of black smoke.

"My first reaction was to blow the smoke away because I didn't want people to freak out that there was smoke coming from the plane."

At that point Hussey flagged down the flight attendant and told him what he saw.

Shortly after, the attendant returned to Hussey's seat to inform him they were going to have to turn the plane around.

The lights were turned off during the flight back to British Columbia.

Hussey said the pilot told passengers over the intercom that the lights would remain off because he didn't want to risk an electrical shortage that could affect the plane. He also told passengers that he and his crew had never dealt with a problem of that nature.

"The whole time I was a little on edge because I didn't really know what this electrical problem was," Hussey said.

"It's just this really awful feeling of being so high up in the air and just flying and wondering what's going to happen. It was just a small little light, but you don't know if that light's going to short out all the other lights and then short out an engine," he said. "You never know and it was kind of scary."

Despite being scared and annoyed, Hussey said he was thankful to be surrounded by friendly faces.

"Having everyone on the plane being from Yellowknife, it made everything kind of funny," he said.

"People were just trying to make the situation as light as they could."

On Sunday, the 45 passengers were put on the next available flights to Yellowknife.

Hussey, his wife and brother finally arrived home Sunday morning.

Debra Williams, manager of corporate communications for Air Canada Jazz, said after the crew talked to maintenance personnel, the decision was made to return to Vancouver where Air Canada has a maintenance base to inspect and repair the plane. She said the problem was due to a malfunction with the overhead passenger light system.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.