A mechanical fault caused a plane wing to catch fire just moments before take-off, leading to operations at Adelaide Airport being temporarily shut down.

The Rex Airlines flight was accelerating down the runway at Adelaide Airport and was bound for Broken Hill just after 7am when passengers spotted the flames on the left engine.

That's when the pilot suddenly braked. 

"The plane started to brake just before we rotated, and I thought 'oh that's not good', and then someone started yelling out 'fire, fire', and I thought 'oh that's not good either'," passenger Warwick Beverley said. 

Beverley and his fiancé Sandy Holmes were desperate to head home after his emergency brain surgery to remove a tumour in Adelaide.

Today, they were left with "another story to tell". 

The plane came to

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