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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A First Air flight en route to Yellowknife from Edmonton on Sunday evening was forced to return to the airport after reporting a problem with one of the plane's engines.

The Boeing 737 jet with 91 passengers and five crew on board was only in the air for approximately 10 minutes, climbing at 16,000 feet, when the pilot reported the problem, according to Chris Ferris, vice-president of marketing and sales with First Air.

He said the pilot shut down the engine and headed back to Edmonton International Airport, where the plane landed safely 20 minutes later on the one working engine that remained.

"It's obviously not a catastrophic event," said Ferris. "It was a precautionary measure. (The pilots) followed the standard operating procedure, shut down the engine and returned to the airport and landed fine."

Flight 957 was making its last of two scheduled runs to Yellowknife that evening when the incident occurred. Ferris said the plane was late taking off for its scheduled 8:10 p.m. departure.

The 30-year-old airplane underwent maintenance and repairs on Monday. This is the first time there have been any reports of problems with this particular plane, said Ferris. He said he didn't know which engine - both of which are located under each wing of the airplane - was causing the problem. First Air has a fleet of six Boeing 737s.

Passengers were given meal vouchers and put up in hotels overnight, after which they were put on one of three flights heading to Yellowknife on Monday.

John Lee, western regional manager with the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, said his office will not be issuing a public report on the incident.

"Technically, what we're going to be doing, is working with company to collect data for our database," said Lee.

It was not clear what was wrong with the engine, said Lee.

"They're very complex devices, and there's many reasons that could cause a vibration or an indication that would require the crew to shut the engine down."