Six people were hospitalized for minor injuries and later released following the “hard landing” of an American Airlines jetliner at Kahului Airport in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, Federal Aviation Administration and airline officials said.
According to an FAA statement, the American Airlines Airbus A320 “made a hard landing” on an airport runway around 2 p.m. local time. Those hospitalized included one passenger and five flight attendants, American said in a separate statement.
Flight 271 from Los Angeles International Airport “experienced an issue upon landing,” the airline said. “The aircraft taxied to the gate under its own power and customers deplaned normally.”
The weather in Maui at the time was partly cloudy and windy with a temperature of roughly 80 degrees, according to National Weather Service data.
The aircraft carried 167 customers and seven crew members, American said. It was taken out of service and undergoing inspection, it said.
“The safety of our customers and team members is our top priority,” the airline said.
The FAA said it was investigating the cause of incident.
According to the Maui airport, the flight was scheduled to arrive at 12:47 p.m., about 79 minutes before its actual arrival. The plane taxied at LAX for more than an hour before leaving the ground, according to Kahului information, as well as data from flight-tracking website FlightAware.
It wasn’t immediately clear why it spent so much time on LAX taxiways before its departure or whether the delay had anything to do with the hard landing upon arrival.
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