United Airlines’ bad week for safety issues continued on Friday afternoon when a plane was forced to make an emergency diversion due to an issue with its hydraulic system.
United flight 821 from San Francisco to Mexico City made an emergency landing at Los Angeles international airport after the crew reported a hydraulics issue, the Federal Aviation Authority said.
In a statement, United said the Airbus A320, which was carrying 105 passengers and five crew, landed safely and passengers were scheduled to take a new plane to Mexico City.
The airline said that the plane had three hydraulic systems for redundancy purposes, and that according to preliminary information there was an issue with one of the systems, ABC 7 reported. The FAA said it will investigate.
Friday’s emergency diversion marks United’s fourth emergency this week, and the first not to involve a Boeing plane.
Earlier that day, United flight 2477, a Boeing 737 Max 8 carrying 160 passengers and six crew, was attempting to land at Houston’s George Bush intercontinental airport when it rolled off the taxiway and into the grass. United added that the passengers, who were all safe, deplaned via movable stairs.
In another incident, United flight 35, a Boeing 777-200 carrying 235 passengers and 14 crew, was taking off from San Francisco to Osaka, Japan, on Thursday when a tire fell off. It landed in the airport’s staff car park, breaking a car window.
The flight returned to the airport, with a United spokesperson saying that the plane was designed to land safely with missing or damaged tires.
On Monday, dramatic footage showed bright flames bursting out of the engine of United flight 1118, a Boeing 737-900 en route from Houston to Fort Myers, Florida. The flight, which was carrying 167 passengers, made an emergency landing back in Houston. Speaking to ABC, passenger David Gruninger said “panic set in with a lot of people” on board.
Also this week, the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on an incident last month in which United flight 1539, a Boeing 737-8, experienced “stuck rudder pedals” during the landing rollout at Newark Liberty international airport in New Jersey.
On Saturday, the justice department said it had opened a criminal investigation into a blowout on another Boeing plane, the 737 Max, on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, said the Wall Street Journal, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.
Earlier in the week, the chair of the NTSB said Boeing would not identify who had worked on the door plug panel in question. Alaska Airlines told Reuters that it was cooperating with the criminal investigation and said the company “do not believe we are a target of the investigation”.
