Passengers had to be evacuated from a United Airlines plane after it rolled off a runway and got stuck in the grass in Houston Friday morning, the second incident related to a United flight at Bush Intercontinental Airport this week.
No injuries were reported among the 160 passengers and six crew members, United Airlines said in a statement. Video taken after the landing showed the plane tilted to one side with one of its wings very close to the ground.
Flight 2477 from Memphis, Tennessee had landed in Houston at around 8 a.m. and was rolling toward a terminal gate when the Boeing 737 Max 8 left the pavement, the Houston Airport System said in a statement.
Stairs were brought to the plane and the crew helped all passengers safely leave, United said.
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The airline did not immediately say what caused the plane to veer off the runway. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating.
“All passengers have been bused to the terminal and are being assisted by our team with their onward connections and other needs. We are removing luggage from the aircraft and will work to reunite customers with their belongings as quickly as possible," United said. “We will work with the NTSB, FAA and Boeing to understand what happened.”
On Monday, another incident occurred involving a United Airlines flight in Houston, when a flight from Houston to Fort Myers was forced to turn around after one of the plane's engines caught fire.
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Several of the 167 passengers aboard the Boeing 737 took video showing a line of flames shooting out of the engine.
“I remember there was just this bright, flashing light that came through the window, and it sounded like a bomb went off, and then it was just a strobe of fire out the window,” said David Gruninger, who was on the connecting flight home to Florida with 15 of his friends after attending a wedding in Mexico.
FlightAware shows Flight 1118 taking off from George Bush Intercontinental Airport at 6:40 p.m. It turned around at 6:52 p.m.
“It was our left engine, our number one engine, that was surging when we were climbing through about 10,000 (feet), and flight attendants saw momentary flames back there,” a pilot can be heard saying on radio transmissions.
The plane landed back at Bush Airport at 7:13 p.m., just 33 minutes after takeoff. United flew its passengers to Fort Myers a few hours later on a different plane.
Another United jetliner lost a tire while taking off from San Francisco on Thursday, and later landed safely in Los Angeles, with no injuries reported.
