A flight that left from Tampa International Airport flying to Nashville was forced to divert to Atlanta on Friday morning for unknown reasons.
The Southwest flight #WN1694 was scheduled to depart from Tampa at 7:10 a.m. and arrive in Nashville at 8:00 a.m.
Squawk 7700: Flight #WN1694 from Tampa to Nashville has declared an emergency and is diverting pic.twitter.com/ToFzkACDZ7
— Breaking Flight News (@FlightBreaking) May 12, 2017
The airplane landed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta at 9:04 a.m.
The image below shows the course the aircraft flew before landing in Atlanta.
Cadillac Jack from 99.5 WQYK told ABC Action News that he was a passenger aboard the flight. After the plane landed in Atlanta, he posted to Facebook saying:
"WOW. EMERGENCY landing in Atnanta (Atlanta). UGH For those of you know me I'm not a big Flyer. Flying to Nashville was not happy about getting on an old plane southwest an old 737 300 heard the flight attendant say that this airplane is going to the boneyard next month so I had a bad feeling and almost got off. Needless to say I was a nervous wreck and we smelled smoke in the air and water dripping from (the) ceiling and an electrical fire with smoke throughout the plane at 40,000 feet "Smell terrible emergency landing in Atlanta fire trucks waiting for us this really sucks. we just descended iin about eight minutes it was horrible my heart is beating 240. The applause was very loud when we landed. TY God for keeping us all safe."
Southwest airlines released this on what happened with the flight:
"Southwest Flight 1694 operating from Tampa to Nashville landed safely at Atlanta International Airport after indications of performance issues with one of the aircraft engines. Out of an abundance of caution, the Captain in command declared an emergency to receive priority handling from air traffic controllers and the aircraft landed safely. There are no reports of injuries. Our Employees in Atlanta are working to get the 129 Customers accommodated on another aircraft to continue their journey Nashville. "
