An emergency on a Southwest Airlines flight caused a temporary suspension of flights to Orlando International Airport in Florida this Sunday, after the aircraft returned to the terminal due to a problem detected shortly after takeoff.
However, the incident forced air operations to be restricted while the situation on one of the runways was addressed.
The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States (FAA) issued an official notice of temporary suspension, known as ground stop, starting at 3:46 p.m. Eastern Time.
The document specified that one aircraft had a flat tire and that, as a consequence, there was only one runway available for operations.
According to reported by FOX 35 Orlando, it was flight 2879 from Southwest Airlines, which had taken off from Orlando bound for Knoxville, Tennessee.
The airline confirmed that the pilots received a maintenance instruction shortly after takeoff and decided to return to the airport.
In a statement, Southwest Airlines explained that the crew followed established procedures and that the plane landed without incident.
The company also reported that it was arranging for the transfer of passengers to Knoxville on another aircraft.
The FAA noted that the emergency temporarily left only one runway available and ordered the suspension of certain flights to Orlando coming from the air traffic control regions of Jacksonville, Miami, and Atlanta.
The restriction was initially scheduled to end at 5:15 p.m., although authorities warned of the possibility of extending it depending on how the situation developed.
Subsequently, the FAA information on Orlando airport stopped showing a general active suspension, but it continued to report delays in departures of between 31 and 45 minutes due to the presence of a grounded aircraft.
The incident occurred while the airport was still dealing with the effects of the national flight grounding ordered by the FAA on Friday, following a telecommunications failure that impacted the systems used by U.S. air traffic controllers.
That disruption caused thousands of cancellations and delays across the country. In Orlando, 281 flights were canceled on Friday and another 232 on Saturday, while an additional 60 cancellations had been recorded by Sunday morning.
The previous disruptions led airport authorities to advise passengers to check directly with their airlines regarding the status of their flights before heading to the airport.
The recovery of national air operations continued this Sunday when a new emergency occurred in Orlando, although authorities have not linked the Southwest Airlines plane incident to Friday's communication failure.
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