Airline officials in Southern California were hoping Monday would be more of a “normal” day after incidents at two local airports caused concern.
A bird strike on an American Airlines jet just after takeoff from LAX forced the plane to turn around and make an emergency landing. Everyone on board was OK.
And at Burbank Airport, two Southwest jets on the ground bumped each other. There were no injuries but the planes were taken out of service for damage inspection.
The American Airlines jet made the emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday after the plane was believed to have struck a bird shortly after takeoff.
Flight 641 from Washington, D.C. reported a mechanical problem, but safely made it to Los Angeles and landed at 8:30 p.m., American Airlines spokeswoman Leslie Scott said.
Declaring the need for an emergency landing is standard procedure in those kinds of scenarios, she said.
There were 120 people on board, according to LAX spokeswoman Katherina Alvarado.
After the plane disembarked, no mechanical issues were discovered, Scott said.
A pair of Southwest Airlines jets were in that minor crash after they bumped into each other Sunday at Bob Hope International Airport in Burbank.
At 2:30 p.m., flight 815 was pushing back from gate A1 and bumped into flight 1240 at gate, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.
No one was injured.
The accident was in an area where air traffic controllers were not supervising the planes, Gregor said.
Flight 815 was bound for Oakland, while the parked flight 1240 was scheduled to fly to Denver, Southwest spokeswoman Emily Samuels said.
Southwest worked to get the 225 passengers on other flights, she said.
The two aircraft were out of service to inspect the damage.
— City News Service