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Plane forced to return to Houston airport shortly after taking off

Xinhua, August 6, 2015 Adjust font size:

A plane with 60 passengers and crew on board returned to Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport after taking off Wednesday afternoon.

According to local TV station KPRC, the United Flight 4438, an Embraer 145 heading to Oklahoma's Tulsa, returned to the airport shortly after taking off at about 2 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), because something struck the plane.

No one was injured and all passengers were loaded onto another plane to head to the original destination.

The cause of the accident is under investigation and officials of the airlines reportedly said that the aircraft may have been struck by a bird.

Although there was no visible indication that the aircraft came in contact with anything, the technicians were inspecting the aircraft and engines as a precautionary measure, a spokesman for the airlines said.

In a related development, another local TV station ABC13 reported that now it appears the aircraft didn't strike anything, but instead suffered some type of mechanical issue. Endi