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No passengers were aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 8701, which was being ferried from Orlando International Airport to Victorville, California, for short-term storage, the airline said.
Just before 3 p.m., the two pilots aboard the flight reported “a performance issue with one of the engines shortly after takeoff,” the airline said.
It is not clear if the emergency landing was related to recent issues involving the planes. An investigation into the crashes focuses on an automated anti-stall system and not engine problems.
The aircraft returned and landed safely in Orlando, according to the FAA, which is investigating. It made an emergency landing on runway 18 Left, which the airport is working to reopen.
The runway shutdown did not impact other traffic, an airport spokeswoman said.
Southwest said the aircraft will be moved to its Orlando maintenance facility for a review.
The Trump administration said it grounded the fleet in light of information gathered at the site of the crash of a March 10 Ethiopian Airlines flight. Until March 13, administration officials had said the planes were safe, despite concerns raised after a Lion Air flight crashed in October.
The causes of the crashes have yet to be determined. But the focus has been on an automatic safety feature — not engine problems — which may have forced the nose of each plane lower when it incorrectly believed the plane was in danger of going into a stall.
Boeing and the FAA said they are working on an upgrade of the planes’ software to deal with that safety feature
CNN’s Chis Isidore and Greg Wallace contributed reporting to this story.
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