More Problems For MD-type Planes

A Delta Air Lines MD-90 airliner returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for an emergency landing with a problem in its horizontal stabilizer, the same device suspected in the Alaska Airlines crash.

Delta Flight 887, carrying 80 passengers, had just taken off for Ontario, Calif., on Wednesday when the pilots discovered apparent mechanical problems, landed and returned to the gate, Delta spokesman Willis Uggen said. No one was injured.

Maintenance workers were sent to check the plane and passengers were placed on other flights, Uggen said.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to inspect horizontal stabilizers on MD-80s and MD-90s after the Jan. 31 crash of an Alaska Airlines MD-83 off the California coast, which killed 88 people.

On Monday, a Continental Airlines MD-82 jet traveling from Las Vegas to Cleveland with 146 people on board made an emergency landing at South Bend, Ind., after the crew reported trouble with wing devices that controlled the aircraft's rolling movement. No one was injured.

On Thursday, one and three days after the respective emergency landings in Dallas-Fort Worth and South Bend, Northwest Airlines announced that the three stabilizer jackscrews removed from the airline's DC-9 planes for evaluation following the Alaska Airlines crash were not defective.

The inspections were ordered after problems were found in the jackscrew of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83 that crashed Jan. 31 off the coast of California, killing all 88 people aboard.

Also on Thursday, Pope John Paul arrived in Cairo, Egypt on Thursday to start a three-day visit that will include a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments. The Alitalia charter plane that flew the 79-year-old Pontiff, his entourage and journalists, was an MD-80.