“While taxiing for takeoff at Dallas Love Field Airport, Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was reportedly struck by gunfire near the cockpit,” a statement on the FAA’s website said.
“The Boeing 737-800 returned to the gate, where passengers deplaned.”
The incident happened at around 8:30 p.m. Friday (0230 GMT Saturday), with the flight headed from Dallas, Texas, to Indianapolis, Indiana.
There were no reported injuries, according to a statement from Dallas Love Field Airport on social media platform X.
The United States civil aviation regulator has grounded all flights to Haiti for a month, after three jets from US-based airlines were struck by bullets while flying over Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, amid escalating gang violence.
A Spirit Airlines plane was hit by gunfire while attempting to land in Port-au-Prince on Monday, resulting in what the airline described as “minor injuries” to one crew member. Later, JetBlue said a post-flight inspection in New York found damage from a bullet on one of its planes returning from Haiti. An American Airlines flight from Haiti’s main airport was also hit by gunfire, according to the airline and a pilot union memo obtained by CNN.
Haitian authorities have already suspended flights in and out of Port-au-Prince for a week. On Tuesday, the US’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a notice prohibiting US civil aviation operations in Haiti below 10,000 feet, for 30 days.
The United Nations announced Tuesday that its flights were also being grounded. “You will have seen that following a Spirit Airlines was shot at on its final approach at the airport in Port-au-Prince, the airport has now been closed until 18 November,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a Tuesday briefing.
“As a result, all UN flights have been suspended, obviously limiting the flow of humanitarian aid and humanitarian personnel into the country,” he said, adding that the movement of more than a dozen trucks containing critical food and medical supplies to Haiti’s south was also postponed.
Haiti’s transitional council blamed armed gangs for the gunfire that struck the Spirit flight and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, accusing them of aiming “to isolate our country on the international stage.”
