The CEO of United Airlines reassured customers that it would “continue to run an operation that puts safety first” only hours before the carrier suffered a tenth incident with one of its planes in two weeks.
On Monday, a flight from San Francisco to Osaka, Japan, was held on the runway for an hour and 45 minutes before returning to the gate to be decanted at around 1:45 p.m. after what a spokesperson described as “an engine start issue.” The flight eventually departed later the same afternoon.
The incident came after a United Airlines plane flew from San Francisco to Oregon missing an external panel on Friday; on March 8 the left main landing gear of a United aircraft collapsed in Houston, Texas after the plane rolled onto the grass by the runway; and a flight from San Francisco to Japan on March 7 lost a tire during take-off.
Around five hours before the latest incident, Scott Kirby, the airline’s chief executive, wrote to customers by email about the company’s “commitment to…