The Canadian airline reported Friday that a WestJet Boeing 737 Max, which was supposed to fly between Calgary and Toronto, was frozen to the ground just before takeoff after a warning light appeared in the cockpit.
The Boeing 737 Max, which returned to work in Canada on Wednesday, was supposed to carry passengers onboard Flight WS 658.
A spokeswoman for the second largest airline in Canada, Lauren Stewart, said in a letter to Agence France-Presse that “after the normal operation of the engine, the monitoring system indicated a possible malfunction that requires verification.”
“It is a process that requires time and restarting the engines that we do not do with passengers on board,” he added, noting that the plane “returned to the boarding gate.”
The return flight WS 665 (from Toronto to Calgary) was also canceled and passengers were directed to other links.
“This was our third commercial flight (of a Boeing 737 Max NDLR)” after WestJet resumed operations with this model on Wednesday, Stewart said.
The device has been checked later by maintenance teams and will be operational again starting Sunday.
The Boeing 737 Max resumed service in Canada on Wednesday after the government approved in December adjustments to its design and additional requirements for crew training.
These aircraft were unable to operate in Canada, as in many other countries, for 22 months, after two accidents that killed 346 people.
In late December, an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX flying between Arizona and Montreal ran into trouble with a plane that forced it to turn back shortly after takeoff.
Earlier this month, the Brazilian company Gol was the first in the world to restart the Boeing 737 Max, as a commercial flight between São Paulo and Porto Alegre passed without incident.
ast / and / rle / dg
