A Southwest Airlines plane flying from Lubbock, Texas, to Las Vegas had to turn around Thursday after an engine caught fire. The jet was an older-generation Boeing 787-800, though nobody was injured.
The incident comes after two FAA-scrutinized Southwest flights disrupted by turbulence. One flight possibly buzzed an airport control tower at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, while the other had to make an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, because a passenger and a flight attendant required medical attention.
One passenger on the Lubbock-to-Las Vegas flight told KABC, the local ABC affiliate, that she didn’t know what happened but was sensed that something was off after hearing a loud noise just after the plane left the tarmac.
“We had gotten to the acceleration part of take-off, about to lift off, and you could hear a ‘thump’ and the plane swerved and we came to a stop,” she told the station. “It didn’t seem scary. We thought a tire had blown out … but the pilot came on and said, ‘The engine had ingested something, and a flame had come out.’”
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In 2023, after a spate of runway near-misses at various airports, the FAA told airlines to double down on their safety procedures and systems. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told reporters on an earnings call that his company was having an entire day dedicated to the matter. That day was about a year ago.
Southwest once had a safety problem severe enough to warrant a federal investigation. But the website airlineratings.com, which takes things like pilot-error incidents, crashes, and passage rate for audits by major airline regulators in the United States and Europe into account, is currently giving the carrier a 7/7 safety rating.