Video shows flames coming from the plane while it was in the air Tuesday.
Southwest confirmed the flight from Houston's Hobby Airport to Cancun experienced a "mechanical issue" after takeoff.
A passenger on the flight told KHOU, a TV station in Houston, that the engine trouble woke him up from a nap. He was headed to Cancun for a vacation with his girlfriend. "All I know is that it started, like, swinging, like, left and right. And I thought … I've been on a lot of flights," Coale Kalisek said. "Like, I fly probably once or twice a month, and I knew that wasn't normal, and so I opened up my window, and I'm sitting right next to the engine and the whole engine, like, you see like fireballs shooting out of it.
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