Qantas flight turned back to Sydney over 'potential landing gear issue'

A Qantas flight to Coffs Harbour has been forced to turn back to Sydney over a potential landing gear issue.

QantasLink flight QF2104 took off from Sydney Airport just before 4pm today but turned back before making it past the northern beaches, according to flight tracking websites.

The airline said a fault indicator on the Dash-8 Q400 showed a "potential landing gear issue".

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"The pilots followed standard procedures and the aircraft has landed safely in Sydney," it said, in a statement.

Qantas said passengers would be placed on a different plane to complete their journey.

It's the latest in a string of incidents for the airline that reclaimed its title as the safest in the world, website Airline Ratings, earlier this month.

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The first major incident of the year came on January 18 when a flight from New Zealand was forced to land in Sydney on one engine having initially issued a mayday call.

In the following days, two Qantas flights were turned back to Melbourne over mechanical issues, one was sent back to Fiji over a report of cabin fumes, another plane returned to Adelaide due to a paperwork issue and technical issues triggered the turnback of a flight to Kalgoorlie. 

Qantas international and domestic CEO Andrew David last week defended the airline, saying the turnbacks were unrelated and insisted they were less common on Qantas than other airlines.

"There are absolutely no issues at Qantas," he told 2GB's Ben Fordham.

"The global aviation industry has about 10,000 diversions or turnbacks per year. We average about 60 per year."