PHOENIX — A pilot reported an engine failure shortly after taking off from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport last week.
It happened last Friday on a Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Burbank, California. A flight that typically takes an hour and a half turned into just 20 minutes after it was forced to make an emergency landing with 116 passengers aboard.
ABC15 obtained audio between the pilot and air traffic control.
PILOT: Southwest 9010 has just had an engine failure.
CONTROLLER: Southwest 9010, say again?
PILOT: Southwest 9010 - catastrophic engine failure. Emergency aircraft, and standby.
CONTROLLER: 9010 Roger, let me know what you need.
"When he declares an emergency, when he says 'I'm an emergency aircraft,' he's asking for, and he'll get, priority handling from the air traffic control services around the Phoenix airspace," explained Parker Northrup, department chair of flight at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Northrup says last Friday's incident is rare but commercial airline pilots are trained to handle this type of situation and still land the plane safely.
"Things like metal fatigue...so, that could have been a failure. It could have been ingestion of a foreign object, right? So, if there was a bird," said Northrup.
CONTROLLER: 9010, did you need any assistance or any equipment on the ground?
PILOT: Yeah, we'll… make sure the emergency trucks are waiting for us, and then we'll clear the runway. We'll give it a nice long roll-out today on runway eight and then just have them check us over, okay?
The pilot in this incident exercised an abundance of caution.
"The engine is extraordinarily hot during operations and he's not able to determine if some of those hot pieces aren't still out there," said Northrup.
There were reports of metallic debris falling southeast of the airport in the process of the plane landing, but Southwest Airlines won't confirm or deny that.
Southwest Airlines issued the following statement:
Last Friday, shortly after taking off from Phoenix Sky Harbor, Flight 110 Safely returned to the airport to check out a mechanical issue with one of the aircraft’s engines. Once on the ground, the aircraft was taken out of service to undergo a maintenance review while another aircraft was brought in to continue the flight to Burbank. We continue to evaluate the situation and do not have additional information to share at this time.
