The number of mechanical issues experienced by United Airlines planes in the past two weeks has apparently increased to 11, as a reader wrote to Newsweek of an incident on her flight.
“I was on a flight last night, EWR to Heathrow UA14,” the reader wrote, describing her March 18 journey from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey to London.
She continued: “Approximately 40 minutes after takeoff, we were told we needed to turn around as the wheels were not retracting. We headed back to Newark, prepared to brace for landing, but ultimately had a safe landing. Another plane was brought for us after we landed in Newark.”
FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, shows that the flight took off from Newark at 8:22 p.m. EDT, behind its scheduled departure time of 7:55 p.m., and returned to EWR at 10:06 p.m.
In a statement to Newsweek, the airline said: “United flight 14 returned to Newark on Monday to address a possible landing gear issue. The flight landed safely. We arranged for another aircraft to take our customers to their destination later that evening.”
Prior to this incident, Newsweek counted a total of ten other incidents occurring on United Airlines planes that took off from or landed in U.S. airports in the past two weeks.
