An Alaska Airlines jet had to make an emergency landing Monday night in San Francisco. No one was injured.

The jet, an MD-80, had just completed a layover at San Francisco International Airport and was on its way to Seattle. Like the downed Flight 261, this Alaska flight was also coming from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

"When it was about 200 feet off the runway, the tower spotted sparks coming from the rear of the aircraft," SFO spokeswoman Chris Ludwell told CBS 2 News in Los Angeles. "So the pilot turned around and made a safe landing at SFO, (and) taxied on his own power to the gate."

Fire trucks met the airplane after it landed safely at about 7:45 p.m.

No injuries were reported among the plane's 83 passengers and five crew members. Passengers were then put on another plane to Seattle but the plane stayed in San Francisco, where engineers examined it.

The sparks, which were seen by airline personnel on about three other aircraft and by San Francisco air-traffic controllers, did not cause any apparent problems within the aircraft, said Ludwell.

The circumstances of Monday's problems bore a resemblance to a disastrous Alaska Airlines flight a week ago, which killed all 88 people aboard in a crash off the California coast.

Both planes had problems while on planned flight paths from Puerto Vallarta to Seattle, via San Francisco.

Both planes were part of the MD-80 series aircraft. The fatal flight was an MD-83. The flight Monday was an MD-80. Both were made by McDonnell Douglas, which is now owned by Boeing.

Investigators suspect a problem with the horizontal stabilizer -- a part at the rear of the plane -- caused the fatal crash. It was unclear what caused Monday's problems in the left engine of the plane, located in the tail area. Evans speculated that something, such as a bird, may have been sucked into the engine.

Pilots had no indication on their gauges that there was anything wrong with the engine, said Alaska Airlines spokesman Jack Evans.

Alaska Airlines has about two plane "turnarounds" among its approximately 15,000 flight segments each month, said Evans. It has about two emergency landings per year, he said.

He said the MD-80 aircraft and Alaska Airlines are safe.

http://www.wcco.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-20000208-074958.html

"I think people have a heightened sense of awareness (of airline issues in general) after the accident. I think the thing that people need to keep in mind is that this aircraft is one of the safest aircraft ever built in the history of aviation," Evans said.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 08, 2000

Answers

I think "the thing that people need to keep in mind"... is that their lives are at risk until we get a truly independent group assisting in these crash investigations.

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000.