An engine cowl on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger plane detached during takeoff from Denver, Colorado, and struck a wing camber on Sunday, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch an investigation.
There were no injuries and the aircraft, which was operating flight 3695 to Houston (Texas, south), returned and landed safely at Denver International Airport at 08:15 (local time; 17:15 Greek time), before being towed to gate.
The Boeing, which was carrying 135 passengers and a crew of six, reached an altitude of 10.300 feet (3.140 meters) before returning to Denver about 25 minutes after takeoff.
The passengers arrived in Houston on another Southwest flight nearly four hours late. The carrier said maintenance teams were examining the aircraft.
BREAKING: Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flight to Houston returns to Denver after engine cover tears away during takeoff pic.twitter.com/Z0uEjleor1
- Breaking911 (@ Breaking911) April 7, 2024
According to FAA records, this particular 737-800 entered service in June 2015.
The manufacturer referred questions about the incident to the carrier.
Southwest declined to say when the engine was last serviced.
The 737-800 — nearly 5.000 examples have been delivered to Boeing customers — is the previous generation of the current 737 NG, which was succeeded by the 737 Max.
A passenger shared via X a video showing the engine cover dislodging itself and breaking into pieces, blown away by the wind.
Boeing, one of the world's two largest aircraft manufacturers, made headlines again when an emergency exit panel that was not properly bolted down came off a 737 Max at an altitude of 16.000 feet on January 5.
After that incident, the FAA grounded the Max 9 aircraft for weeks, prohibited Boeing from increasing the production rate of the aircraft, and ordered it to develop and present a coherent plan to address "systemic control problems quality" within 90 days.
Production fell below the 38 Max in the month allowed by the FAA. The Ministry of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into the January incident.
Boeing experienced perhaps the worst crisis in its history when two Maxes crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing all 346 people on board, in late 2018 and early 2019; the cause was mainly a problem with the anti-propagation software. MCAS, which relied on data from only one sensor, while the pilots were not trained for it. The entire Max fleet was grounded from March 2019 to November 2020. The issue was resolved and the aircraft of the type eventually returned to the airwaves, but the Max continues to experience problems.
Source: protothema.gr