A Southwest Airlines 737-700 bound for Los Angeles on Monday was forced to make a rapid return to Salt Lake City shortly after take-off due to an engine fire.
A witness Al Oshiro was arriving for work when he saw flames coming out of the jet's engine, "All of a sudden I started seeing these orange flames just coming off the right side of the engine,” said Oshiro, an aerospace engineer for Moog Inc. He heard a sound “so loud that a lot of people came out of the building because people thought the building was getting hit.”
Passenger Che Cullenbine said he was sitting in the 5th row and spoke to local media about his experience "I heard what sounded like small little explosions," Cullenbine said. "Almost like somebody had an assault rifle and they were firing three round bursts like duh-duh-duht. Duh-duh-duht. Really loud so I looked out the window and I noticed that at the same time the sounds were happening there were flames coming out the back of the engine on the right side."
Another passenger Craig Johnson commented "I was sitting right on the row where the engine was and I looked out to the right and the right engine kept exploding, that's the best way I can describe it. Saw balls of fire and it got pretty tense for a few minutes."
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-700 landed safely, with about 110 passengers and five crew members onboard the flight. Southwest Airlines have confirmed in a statement that The passengers were re-accommodated on another aircraft at Los Angeles. The low-cost carrier advised the second flight arrived in Los Angeles at 11.43 local time, just 3 hours and 38 minutes after the original flight was scheduled to land and apologised for any inconvenience.
Southwest said the pilots returned to the airport after they received a cockpit indicator of “a potential performance issue” with one of the jet’s engines.
❗This article was written for this site by a member of our team 🙋, please do share it with your friends via social media. You are also welcome to post it or republish elsewhere on the 🌎web on the condition that you credit the author and link back to our site. Thank you.
♻ We care about the environment, please think twice before you hit ‘print’
A Southwest Airlines 737-700 bound for Los Angeles on Monday was forced to make a rapid return to Salt Lake City shortly after take-off due to an engine fire.
