ORLANDO, Fla. – News 6 continues checking with officials at Orlando International Airport to learn more about the impact at MCO after the FAA’s order to ground more than a hundred planes worldwide.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday announced the temporary grounding and requirement of “immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes.”
This comes after a door on a 737 MAX 9 flying with Alaska Airlines from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, blew out mid-flight on Friday night. That plane had to make an emergency landing. No one was severely hurt.
Melissa Smith and her husband Darren are finally heading back home to Australia after vacationing for a few days in Orlando with their two daughters.
“Home from our vacation and we got stuck actually on the plane at the terminal,” Melissa Smith said.
She told News 6 they were on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane.
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They told me their packed United Airlines flight Saturday never took off from MCO, even though they boarded and sat on the plane for about 30 minutes, awaiting direction from the FAA.
“It was our first leg going home and we got booted off the plane,” Darren Smith said.
Here at Orlando International Airport, we saw several flights cancelled Sunday, including United and Alaska Airlines flights.
United Airlines said in a statement, in part, that it had temporarily suspended service on select Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft to conduct inspections.
Alaska Airlines announced it had begun its own detailed inspection process which should be complete in the next few days.
Peter Greenberg is a CBS News travel editor.
“If this had happened at a higher altitude, the odds are this could have been a whole lot worse,” Greenberg said.
The Smith family says though they were a bit inconvenienced getting back home, they’re grateful their airline took the FAA’s order seriously.
“They made the right choice, they’re putting our safety first and that’s our priority,” Smith said.
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