Plane lands safely at McCarran after engine fire

By Jeff Pope (contact)

Published Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 | 3:51 p.m.

Updated Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 | 6:09 p.m.

A Southwest Airlines plane en route to New York was forced to turn around and make an emergency landing in Las Vegas today after an engine caught fire, officials said.

The twin-engine Boeing 737 was in the air just 19 minutes before the emergency landing at McCarran International Airport.

Shortly after takeoff at 3:09 p.m. from Las Vegas, the right engine caught fire, said Ian Gregor, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The crew shut down the engine and landed safely at 3:28 p.m. on the one remaining engine.

There was no smoke or fire visible during the landing, according to Southwest spokesman Paul Flaningan.

Fire and rescue crews stationed at the airport followed the plane as it taxied back to the gates while three stations near the airport were placed on alert.

No injuries were reported, said Karl Lee, spokesman for the Clark County Fire Department.

The aircraft is equipped with a fire-suppression system, but it was not activated, Flaningan said.

The FAA will investigate the cause possibly starting tomorrow, Gregor said.

The plane, flight 273, was headed to Long Island Islip MacArthur Airport in New York carrying 118 passengers.

Passengers were placed on a later flight the same day about three hours later than scheduled, Flaningan said.

The plane was towed to a Southwest maintenance hanger on site, where it will undergo repairs.

Pilots did not have to dump fuel, which sometimes can occur during emergency landings.

Jeff Kinney, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at UNLV, which is near the McCarran north-south flight path, said he saw small flames shooting from a Southwest plane's engine as the aircraft was climbing out of McCarran this afternoon and heard it make "popping sounds" from his office.

"It was probably a couple hundred feet lower than most of them and it was making a different sound so it caught my attention," he said.

Weather did not appear to be a factor in the incident. There were light clouds and the visibility was 10 miles over Las Vegas this afternoon, the National Weather Service said.