A Southwest Airlines flight returned safely to Denver International Airport on Sunday after the engine cover of a Boeing 737-800 fell off during takeoff and hit the wing flap, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Flight 3695 was en route to Houston but returned to Denver Airport around 8:15 a.m. after the crew reported that the engine cowling or cover had fallen off.
The plane carrying 135 passengers and five crew members was towed back to the gate. The FAA said it would investigate.
In a statement, Southwest Airlines said its maintenance crews would inspect the plane. Southwest said the passengers boarded another plane and arrived at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston about three hours late.
“We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay, but we place our highest priority on the safety of our customers and employees,” the statement said.
A video posted on social media from a window near the plane’s wing showed a blue cowl detaching from the engine and spinning in the wind as the plane taxied down a runway before a large section of it eventually fell away.
“Let’s declare a state of emergency for Southwest 3695 and we want an immediate return,” a crew member said, according to radio transmissions with an air traffic controller. “We have part of the engine cowling hanging down.”
The incident comes at a time of increased scrutiny of other incidents in commercial air travel, starting with the harrowing Jan. 5 emergency on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, in which a panel known as a door plug struck a new Boeing 737 Max 9, the Delivered to the USA, the airline demolished it just a few months earlier.
No one died, but it sparked investigations into Boeing’s Max 9 model and raised questions about quality control problems in aircraft production.
Then last month came a series of eight episodes featuring United Airlines planes in two weeks.
Maintenance problems, loose tires and missing panels were among the issues affecting six Boeing and two Airbus jets. A safety expert said such cases were typical and were “incorrectly linked to Boeing’s problems.”
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2024-04-07 22:22:14
www.nytimes.com
