The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:50 PM
Allegiant Flight Headed To Michigan From Orlando Has Emergency Landing In Knoxville Monday
Flight 676 left Orlando's Sanford International Airport around 9 a.m. and trouble started about an hour and a half into the flight. That's when the jet's computer system signaled a possible fire in the aircraft's cargo bay.
"The flight was diverted to Knoxville, Tennessee out of an abundance of caution after an indicator light issue," Krysta Levy, Allegiant Spokeswoman, said.
The flight landed safely at McGhee Tyson around 10:30 a.m. with 150 passengers and six crew members on board.
A new Allegiant flight was sent to Knoxville to pick up the passengers. It arrived around 4 p.m. and was estimated to get passengers to Flint around 6:15 at night. After being stuck in a terminal for close to six and a half hours, passengers arrived in Flint just after 6 p.m., WJRT-TV reports.
"I felt like I was in a roller coaster," said Nuzhat Ali who spoke with WJRT-TV in Flint after the plane landed.
"It's just with all the incidents you've been hearing you know, I was worried about the kids, in the end I was just like, thank God it is over," said Ali.
The low-cost carrier Allegiant Air recently came under fire following a "60 Minutes" investigation that raised significant safety concerns.
Investigators with the news program found that between Jan. 1, 2016 and October 2017, the Las Vegas airline experienced more than 100 serious mechanical incidents, including aborted takeoffs, rapid descents, flight control malfunctions and midair engine failures.
More than a year's worth of Federal Aviation Administration reports for Allegiant and seven other airlines show that the carrier was on average nearly three and a half times more likely to have a midair breakdown than Delta, United, American, Spirit, or JetBlue.
Shares of parent company Allegiant Travel Co. plunged 13 percent before the opening bell.
The airline issued a statement to CBS News from Allegiant Vice President of Operations Eric Gunst stating:
"It is unfortunate and disappointing that CBS 60 Minutes has chosen to air a false narrative about Allegiant and the FAA. Not only do we expect our team members to adhere to all company procedures and policies—including safety procedures—but many positions are subject to statutory and regulatory obligations. The violation of those obligations would trigger not only punitive action from Allegiant, but could also result in enforcement action from regulatory agencies, loss of a certification, and even criminal charges. To suggest that Allegiant would engage in the practice of asking team members to violate company and regulatory obligations is offensive and defamatory.
"CBS produced a one-sided narrative by cherry-picking interviews and ignoring publicly-available facts. For example, the show's star interviewee, John Goglia, is not an un-biased commentator; he is a paid expert working for a former Allegiant pilot who has sued Allegiant. That pilot, Jason Kinzer, claims that he was wrongfully terminated after an evacuation. In fact, Kinzer was terminated because he unnecessarily evacuated a plane "at great risk to the crew and passengers" even though there "was no smoke, fire, or an aircraft malfunction," and, during a post-flight investigation, he refused to "acknowledge his mistakes" or "demonstrate[] that he was capable of learning and growing from the event going forward." (See Defendants' Revised Motion for Summary Judgment, Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County, NV, Case No. A-15-727524-C.) Surprisingly, the 60 Minutes presentation of Mr. Kinzer's case omits this publicly-available side of the story.
