A Hawaiian airlines flight bound for Honolulu was forced to return to the Seattle airport Monday shortly after takeoff due to reports of smoke in the cockpit, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The Airbus A330 took off at about 1 p.m. from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport carrying 273 passengers and 10 crew members. It was heading to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu when the crew reported fumes in the flight deck, Hawaiian Airlines spokesperson Marissa Villegas told The Associated Press in an email. The FAA is investigating the incident on Hawaiian Airlines Flight 21. “The captain declared an emergency to obtain priority handling and the Airbus A330 landed at SEA without incident,” Villegas said. Fire and medical personnel met the aircraft at the gate as a precaution and everyone onboard safely deplaned, she said. Once the aircraft was cleared, the Port of Seattle Fire Department boarded to investigate and did not find any smoke or smell at the time, airport spokesperson Perry Cooper told the AP in an email. Flight 21 left Seattle on Tuesday morning in a new aircraft, Villegas said. "Safety is our priority, and we sincerely apologize for this event," she said.<br/>
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A Horizon Air flight had to turn around and land after an eagle struck the plane. Around noon on December 24, Horizon Air flight 2041 took off from Anchorage, Alaska on its way to Fairbanks. Shortly afterward, a bird struck the plane, forcing the crew to turn around and land back in Anchorage, a spokesperson for the airline said. Once they landed, the airline swapped out the plane and the passengers continued safely on to Fairbanks. “The captain and first officer are trained for these situations and landed the aircraft safely without any issue,” a spokesperson for the airline told The Independent in a statement. “No emergency was declared.” “The aircraft was removed from service for inspection and has since returned to service,” the spokesperson added. Horizon Air is owned by Alaska Air Group, which also owns Alaska Airlines.<br/>
A Ryanair flight bound for the Austrian capital Vienna had to land in the neighbouring Czech Republic late on Monday after encountering GPS problems and poor visibility, the company said. The Irish airline was responding to an Austrian media report that the flight from Riga had diverted to the Czech city of Brno because the GPS signal was disrupted over Poland due to the conflict in Ukraine. A Ryanair flight bound for the Austrian capital Vienna had to land in the neighbouring Czech Republic late on Monday after encountering GPS problems and poor visibility, the company said. The Irish airline was responding to an Austrian media report that the flight from Riga had diverted to the Czech city of Brno because the GPS signal was disrupted over Poland due to the conflict in Ukraine.<br/>
Korean authorities announced Wednesday that all 179 victims of the deadly Jeju Air plane crash have been identified, four days after the tragic accident. The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters confirmed the identities of the last five victims who had not been previously identified. On Sunday, the Jeju Air aircraft carrying 181 people, including six crew members, belly-landed and crashed into a barrier. The crash claimed the lives of 179 passengers, leaving only two survivors, both flight attendants. <br/>
Data has been completely extracted from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crashed Jeju Air aircraft and is now being transformed to voice, the transport ministry said Wednesday. "We have completed the extraction of voice data and will start the work of converting it into voice files today," the ministry said in a briefing. The ministry earlier said it had retrieved both data recorders — flight and voice data recorders — from the crashed Jeju Air B737-800 aircraft. The flight recorder reportedly suffered some external damage, but the cockpit voice recorder was found in a relatively better condition. The ministry has noted it may take more time to extract data from the flight data recorder. Meanwhile, two additional investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have joined the on-site probe into the Jeju Air crash at Muan International Airport, government sources said. With these additions, the number of the U.S. team members increased to 10, including five from NTSB and four from aviation manufacturer Boeing.<br/>
Air safety experts on Tuesday questioned the placement of an airport embankment into which a South Korean passenger jet slammed after skidding past the end of the runway, resulting in the country's deadliest domestic air disaster. All 175 passengers and four of the six crew were killed on Sunday when the Jeju Air plane belly-landed at Muan International Airport, ploughed into the sand-and-concrete embankment and burst into a fireball. What caused the pilot to attempt the landing after declaring an emergency was still under investigation. But comments in the airport's operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, said the embankment was too close to the end of the runway and recommended that the location of the equipment be reviewed during a planned expansion. A transport ministry official said on Tuesday authorities would need to check the document before replying to questions. Experts criticised the positioning of the embankment, which held navigation equipment. "Unfortunately, that thing was the reason that everybody got killed, because they literally hit a concrete structure," Captain Ross Aimer, the CE of Aero Consulting Experts, told Reuters. "It shouldn't have been there." Meanwhile, police worked to identify victims while impatience rose among families gathered at the airport as they waited for the bodies of their loved ones to be released.<br/>
A pre-flight inspection of a Jeju Air passenger plane hours before it crashed in South Korea, killing 179 people, found "no issues", the airline has said. "Nothing abnormal was noted with the landing gear," the airline's CEO Kim Yi-bae told a news conference in Seoul, as investigations continue into why the wheels were not down when it performed an emergency landing. The plane was travelling from Bangkok when it crash-landed at Muan International Airport on Sunday and slid into a wall off the end of the runway, bursting into flames and killing everyone on board except two crew members. Investigators are still working to identify victims and establish what caused South Korea's deadliest ever air crash. Many question remain unanswered and investigators are looking at the role a bird strike or weather conditions may have played. They are also focusing on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it hit the runway shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) on Sunday. Hundreds of grieving relatives have been camping out at the airport in Muan, furious that they have not yet seen the bodies of their loved ones. So far just a few of the victims' remains have been released to their families. On Tuesday, four were transported to funeral homes but most other families are still waiting for their loved ones to be identified.<br/>
Wizz Air on Tuesday said it had signed a new support agreement with defence and aerospace firm RTX's tab Pratt & Whitney amid engine woes, adding that it expects 40 of its planes to stay grounded through fiscal year 2026. The low-cost Hungarian airline said Pratt & Whitney will provide commercial support, including operational assistance and a compensation package for direct costs related to grounded aircraft, through the end of 2026. Budapest-headquartered Wizz Air, which flies an all-Airbus fleet, has had to navigate additional challenges after Pratt & Whitney in 2023 said more than 1,000 engines needed to be removed from Airbus planes and checked for microscopic cracks. In September 2023, Wizz Air had estimated a potential 10% capacity reduction in the second half of fiscal 2024, due to the inspection of Pratt & Whitney's turbofans. In November this year, it posted a bigger-than-expected drop in first-half profit, citing ongoing issues with engine inspections that grounded its Airbus planes and the impact of conflict in the Middle East. Wizz Air also said it expects to return to growth by taking 50 new Airbus A321NEO deliveries and growing seat capacity by about 20% during 2026.<br/>