The Boeing 747-400 was about an hour into a flight to Argentina with 199 passengers on board when it had to turn back.
Six babies were on board QF17.
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The pilot and crew donned oxygen masks when smoke began pouring from an instrument panel after a short circuit in the electrical system.
After dumping fuel, the jet requested a priority clearance to land at Sydney Airport, touching down at 1.22pm. Six emergency service vehicles were called to the runway but the jet landed safely.
It was the fifth mid-air drama for Qantas in 10 days.
On November 4, an engine exploded on an A380 Airplane Models soon after take-off from Singapore, forcing Qantas to ground its fleet of six superjumbos.
Two days later another Qantas jet was forced to turn back to Singapore with an overheated engine. Within hours a Qantas flight returned to London when a panel light wrongly indicated a problem with its hydraulics.
Last Friday, a Qantas flight from Perth to Melbourne was forced back when the crew became aware of a vibration in one of the Boeing 767's engines.
Qantas deployed spare capacity and shuffled its fleet to maintain long-haul operations affected by the grounding of its six A380s.
Chief executive officer Alan Joyce trumpeted the company's safety record to allay concerns that passengers might shun Qantas in favour of other carriers.
Yesterday's incident was reported to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Air Transport Safety Bureau.
"Our engineers are still working to establish the cause of the issue," a Qantas spokesman said.
Passengers were due to leave on a replacement aircraft about 5pm.
But that departure was delayed by damage to the runway possibly caused by bad weather.
Qantas insisted no smoke appeared in the main cabin.
"Today was a minor electrical fault in the cockpit - it was simply to do with a faulty part," spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said.
"We do not expect this aircraft to be grounded in future days. The feedback we have had is our technical crew, our pilots and cabin crew have handled this situation in a perfect manner."
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