Travelers from the Mile High City will be clocking up the miles with Denver’s newest long-haul service.
16.03.2024 - 01:27 / nytimes.com / United Airlines
A United Airlines flight that took off on Friday morning from San Francisco International Airport landed in Oregon in the afternoon missing an external panel, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The panel was found to be missing after the plane, a Boeing 737-800, landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport in Oregon and parked at a gate, United Airlines said in a statement. It was unclear when or how the panel went missing.
According to the airline, there was no indication of any damage to the plane during the flight, and the aircraft did not declare an emergency on its way to the Medford airport.
“We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service,” the airline said. “We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.”
The plane was carrying 139 passengers and a crew of six, according to United Airlines. No injuries were reported.
Boeing referred questions about the flight to United Airlines. The F.A.A. said it planned to investigate the episode.
The discovery of the missing panel on Friday came as Boeing has faced heavy scrutiny in recent weeks after a door-sized section blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines flight in January just minutes after it had taken off from Portland, Ore. There were no major injuries during the flight, but the frightening episode, which was recorded on video, prompted government officials to look into quality control at Boeing.
After the January flight, the F.A.A. began a six-week audit of Boeing, which found “multiple instances” in which the plane maker had failed to follow through with quality-control requirements.
Since then, there have been a number of issues with flights on Boeing aircraft.
On March 8, a United Airlines flight that had landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston rolled into the grass as the plane, a Boeing 737, exited onto the taxiway, according to the F.A.A.
In February, a Madrid-bound American Airlines flight, a Boeing 777, diverted to Boston Logan International Airport with a cracked windshield shortly after it had departed from Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Travelers from the Mile High City will be clocking up the miles with Denver’s newest long-haul service.
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After a spate of high-profile airline industry incidents, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has issued a memo addressing safety concerns.In the memo Kirby said safety is the airline’s top priority, according to a report from The Points Guy.The airline CEO also discussed United’s own safety incidents, including acknowledging the airline has had “a number” of such incidents."While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus," Kirby wrote, per The Points Guy. "Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups.”The memo from the CEO also indicates that United is working on rolling out a variety of new safety measures. Though Kirby also explained that the new safety upgrades were in the works before United’s recent spate of safety episodes. Some of the new measures the airline will be implementing include an extra day of training for pilots and new curriculum for maintenance technicians."I'm confident that we'll learn the right lessons from these recent incidents and continue to run an operation that puts safety first and makes our employees and customers proud," Kirby added.Kirby’s memo comes on the heels of a rocky few months for the airline industry as a whole. The most significant of which was the January 5 incident involving a Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max flight during which a door plug blew off after take-off and the plane was required to make an emergency landing.A handful of passengers who were on that Alaska Airlines flight have since filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Boeing, alleging negligence on the part of the plane manufacturer.As for United Airlines, one of its flights involving a 737 Max rolled off the runway at George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston recently. Part of the plane’s landing gear collapsed as a result. That United incident followed a tire falling from a Boeing 777-200 plane (also flown by United) one day earlier.