An American Airlines plane bound for Madrid had to make a U-turn less than one hour after taking off from New York, after pilots noticed a crack in the windshield of the Boeing 777. The incident happened Wednesday evening, 28 February.
According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the plane left the runway at New York’s JFK Airport at 7:55 pm local time, but it was already turned around by 9:00 pm. Pilots communicated an Alert 2, which indicates that an aircraft is having “major difficulties (i.e., a positive indication of fire on board the aircraft; faulty landing gear; no hydraulic pressure; engine failure on a two-engine large aircraft; etc.)” and a “difficult or crash landing may be expected”, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Thankfully, no crash landing took place and Flight 94 landed safely at Boston’s Logan International Airport a little after 10:00 pm. The aircraft was taken out of service for checks and maintenance, while passengers had to spend the night in Boston and were then put on another flight to Madrid the following day.
“The flight landed safely and the aircraft was taken out of service to be inspected by our maintenance team”, American Airlines said in a statement. “Customers will re-depart for [Madrid] tomorrow on a replacement aircraft. We never want to disrupt our customers’ travel plans and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.”
While the airline admitted to this being a “maintenance issue”, this does not come at a good time for Boeing. The manufacturer has been facing blow after blow since the beginning of the year when part of a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane fell out in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight. The incident led to the grounding by the FAA of all 737 Max 9s with the configuration of the Alaska Airlines one.
Sine then, preliminary investigations have revealed faulty hardware, loose bolts, ignored warnings from pilots and Boeing CEO, Dave Calhoun, admitted the company’s mistake in the incident. Other Boeing models have also been facing problems – now the 777 and earlier this year, the nose wheel of a 757 just fell off and rolled down the runway.
All of these have led to Boeing’s European competitor, Airbus, to gain not only the confidence of passengers, but also investors, with market values showing the different paths the two companies are on.
