A United Airlines Holdings Inc. aircraft ran off the taxiway into a grassy area after landing at Houston, Texas, on Friday, the third incident this week involving the airline’s Boeing planes.
United Flight 2477, with 160 passengers and six crew, had just landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport at about 8am when it veered into the grass on a turn.
No one was injured, and passengers left the plane on a set of stairs before being bused to the terminal, the airline said.
The incident follows the mid-air loss of a tyre from a United Boeing 777-200 Thursday, just after the plane took off from San Francisco on a flight to Osaka, Japan, and an engine fire on a United flight from Houston to Fort Myers, Florida, earlier this week.
The 777 headed to Osaka had 249 people on board. It diverted to Los Angeles International Airport and landed without incident. The tyre that plummeted down damaged at least one car in an airport car park.
The plane in the Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines burst into flames 10 minutes after take-off. The 21-year-old aircraft was also a 737 – but an earlier version than the Max, according to FlightRadar24.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate all three incidents, while the National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to Houston.
United said it will work with the FAA, NTSB and Boeing to understand what happened.
New Zealand PM forced to fly commercially as his Boeing jets keep breaking down
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While they came in rapid succession, this week’s scares do not appear linked to known issues with Boeing and its 737 Max, and are unlikely to signal broader safety trends.
The mishaps come at an inopportune time for Boeing. The planemaker is working to restore its reputation following a mid-air panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.
The NTSB has found that Boeing workers apparently did not attach four bolts holding the panel to the plane’s fuselage.
The plane in the January incident was also a 737 Max. Boeing has come under withering scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers and customers over manufacturing quality on the model, which re-entered the headlines this year after its global grounding in 2019 following two fatal accidents.