Newark airport closes for several hours due to evacuation and plane removal

New York.- The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration closed Newark Airport (New Jersey), which serves the New York metropolitan area, for about five hours this Wednesday due to a “emergency” on a plane, which had to be evacuated and removed. According to the agency’s website, FAA, the airport will be closed from 6:00 PM local time to 11:00 PM local time, and there is also a total halt on departures due to the emergency and delays until midnight due to bad weather, with “low clouds”. The airport indicated on its X account that air operations were “temporarily suspended while an aircraft is removed from the runway due to a previous incident“, while the website cited “the emergency evacuation of an aircraft”.

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The Port Authority reported that a flight that had taken off from Newark this afternoon at 5:43 p.m. local time towards West Palm Beach (Florida), operated by Jetblue, had to return a few minutes later due to an engine failure but managed to land without causing injuries, according to the local media ABC7. The FAA, for its part, told local media that the crew of that flight reported smoke in the cabin after landing, and the passengers of the plane had to be evacuated with slides.