A Southwest Airlines flight safely returned to Denver International Airport on Sunday after the engine cover of a Boeing 737-800 fell off during takeoff and struck the wing flap, the FAA said. Flight 3695 was headed to Houston but returned to the Denver airport around 8:15 a.m. after the crew reported the engine cowling, or cover, fell off. The plane, which had 135 passengers and five crew members, was towed back to the gate. The FAA said it would investigate. Southwest said its maintenance teams were reviewing the aircraft. Southwest said the passengers boarded another plane and arrived at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston approximately three hours behind schedule. “We apologize for the inconvenience of their delay, but place our highest priority on ultimate safety for our customers and employees,” the statement said. A video taken from a window near the plane’s wing posted on social media showed a blue cowling peeling off the engine and twisting in the wind as the plane moved down a runway before a large portion of it eventually fell off. “Let’s go ahead and declare an emergency for Southwest 3695 and we’d like an immediate return,” a crew member said, according to radio transmissions with an air traffic controller. “We’ve got a piece of the engine cowling hanging off.”<br/>
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Federal officials are investigating a reported engine fire that forced a Southwest Airlines plane to cancel takeoff and return to the gate at the Lubbock, Texas, airport on Thursday. Southwest said Friday that pilots “received an indication of a possible engine issue,” and the Boeing 737 taxied back to the terminal at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. The Lubbock fire department said online that it confirmed there was a fire in one of the two engines that needed to be extinguished. The FAA said it was investigating the incident. The flight was headed to Las Vegas with 154 passengers and crew of six on board, Southwest said. The airline flew in a replacement plane from Dallas to complete the trip later Thursday night. The plane was a Boeing 737-800, an older model than the 737 Max. The engines are made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran S.A.<br/>
SAT Aero Holdings, a U.S. aviation firm hired by Mexico to relaunch state-run airline Mexicana, was accused by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday of breaching its contract, after SAT made similar charges in a lawsuit against the carrier. SAT is seeking at least $841m in the lawsuit filed last month, alleging that Mexicana reneged on its obligations almost from the start. According to SAT, Mexicana officials failed to pay $5.5m of aircraft lease deposits, refused to sign documents, went around SAT to directly hire pilots and crew trained by the aviation firm, and failed to obtain licenses needed to import planes to Mexico and operate them. However, Lopez Obrador said it was SAT that "breached the contract it had signed with Mexicana." "They aren't serious people. They had agreed to deliver the planes by a certain date and they didn't," he said at a press conference. Lopez Obrador launched Mexicana last year by reviving the brand of a bankrupt carrier, putting it in the hands of the military. The lawsuit said Mexicana had tasked SAT with obtaining 10 Boeing 737-800 aircraft ahead of its launch, which was ultimately pushed back to December.<br/>
A Virgin Atlantic jet collided with another plane while it was being towed at Heathrow Airport on Saturday, aviation authorities said. There were no reports of injuries. Virgin said its Boeing 787-9 had completed a flight and had no passengers aboard when its wingtip clipped a stationary British Airways jet while being towed from a stand at the airport’s Terminal 3. Images posted on social media showed several fire trucks surrounding the two planes, whose wings were touching. “We’ve commenced a full and thorough investigation and our engineering teams are performing maintenance checks on the aircraft, which for now has been taken out of service,” Virgin said in a statement. BA said engineers were also looking at its plane. Heathrow said that “no passenger injuries have been reported and we do not anticipate there to be any ongoing impact to airport operations.”<br/>
India's Vistara Airlines said on Sunday it was scaling back operations by around 25-30 flights per day, amid disruption that sources have said is caused by a shortage of pilots. Vistara, owned by the Tata group and Singapore Airlines, currently operates more than 300 flights a day, but has cancelled scores of flights since April 1 after a number of its pilots went on sick leave. Some of those who went on leave complained that their pay had been cut ahead of a merger with Tata-owned Air India later this year, as they struggled with growing fatigue from a busy schedule. The company did not refer to pilot absences. But its spokesperson said the cancellations will "provide the much-needed resilience and buffer in the rosters". Operations were scaled back mostly in the airline's domestic network and would reduce overall levels back to where they were at the end of February, the statement added. The company said the changes would help stabilise operations for the rest of the month and beyond.<br/>
Pakistan has formally launched the tender for a majority stake in its national carrier, seeking expressions of interest from potential bidders by 3 May. The government, which directly holds a 96% stake in Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), is seeking to sell between 51% and 100% of the airline. It came after the country’s Privatisation Commission Board approved the prequalification criteria for the evaluation of bids, clearing the path to the formal launch of the tender. Privatisation minister Abdul Aleem Khan says PIA represents ”a very attractive opportunity for both local and international investors especially after the restructuring of the airline where major liabilities of the company have been taken off its balance sheet”. He adds that he hopes the Pakistani business community will also ”look at this opportunity with enthusiasm and will show their interest in acquiring the national airline”. The tender highlights that PIA holds rights for 97 international routes, including slots at some of the attractive destinations. It also cites figures showing Pakistan’s “under-served” aviation market is set to have an annual compound growth rate of 5.5% over the coming five years. PIA’s most recent full-year annual report shows it generated revenues of PKR172b ($619m) in carrying 4.2m passengers in 2022. That is around a million lower than its pre-pandemic passenger high of 5.2m in 2019. The report shows the airline was loss-making between 2017 and 2022. <br/>