A Delta Air Lines flight was forced to return to the main Atlanta airport on Monday morning after “possible smoke” was reported inside the flight deck, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.
The FAA said that Delta Air Lines Flight 876, which was headed to Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina, returned to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at around 9 a.m. local time after the crew reported the possible smoke.
No other details were provided by the FAA, which said it would investigate the incident.
A spokesperson for the Atlanta-based airline confirmed the plane’s return in a statement to media outlets on Monday.
“The flight crew followed procedures to return to Atlanta when a haze inside the aircraft was observed after departure,” the Delta spokesperson said. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people, and we apologize to our customers for the experience.”
The incident occurred a week after a Delta plane flipped onto its roof as it was making a landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All 80 people on board the plane survived and none suffered major injuries, officials said.
Later, Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CBS News that the pilots on the crash-landed jet were experienced and familiar with flying in wintry conditions, and he praised the flight crew for quickly evacuating the plane after it flipped.
“This is what we train for,” Bastian said. “We train for this continuously.”
The airline also has confirmed that it was offering $30,000 goodwill payments to all passengers—a move that would not impact their legal rights, including their ability to sue the carrier. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Delta in the wake of the Toronto crash.
Last Monday’s incident and today’s emergency return followed a series of recent crashes in North America.
In late January, a U.S. Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet in Washington, killing 67 people, in the worst aviation disaster in decades.
At least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia in early February, and 10 people were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska this month, officials said.
On Monday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, whose agency oversees the FAA, told Fox News that recent workforce cuts at the agency did not involve people in “critical safety positions.”
“At FAA, we cut 352 people out of ... 46,000 people,” he told the outlet. Many of those workers were probationary, meaning they were employed for less than a year, he added.
