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Boeing 737 MAX makes emergency landing at Florida airport

The plane had requested landing "due to reports of a mechanical issue involving one of the aircraft’s engines"

NEW YORK, March 27. /TASS/. A Boeing 737 MAX, owned by US air carrier Southwest Airlines, had to return to the airport of Orlando, Florida, shortly after takeoff due to a malfunction, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said in a statement, emailed to TASS on Tuesday.

The local branch of Fox News reported earlier in the day that the plane was performing a flight to California and had two pilots and two passengers on board.

According to the FAA statement, the aircraft’s crew "declared an emergency after the aircraft experienced a reported engine problem."

"The aircraft returned and landed safely in Orlando. No passengers were aboard the aircraft, which was being ferried to Victorville, Calif., for storage," the statement reads. "The FAA is investigating."

Meanwhile, the plane’s owner, Southwest Airlines, said the plane had requested landing "due to reports of a mechanical issue involving one of the aircraft’s engines," not a computer system breakdown or a software error, suspected in two recent crashes involving the same type of the aircraft.

"The aircraft will later be moved to our maintenance facility at the airport where it’ll undergo a maintenance review," Southwest Airlines said.

Accoring to the statement, the plane was supposed to be flown to "a facility in California under routine ferry flight protocols where our other 737 MAX 8 aircraft are being stored until the FAA approves the aircraft fleet to re-enter passenger service."

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft operated by US airlines or in US territory following the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash en route from Addis Abada to Kenya's Nairobi on 10 March 2019. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 157 people onboard.

On October 29, 2018, an aircraft of the same type operated by Lion Air crashed in the Java Sea minutes after taking off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people (181 passengers and eight crew) onboard. The plane’s black boxes recorded problems with some of the plane’s systems.