United Airlines plane makes emergency landing after wheel falls off during takeoff
NEW DELHI: A Boeing 777 jet, with 249 people aboard, made an emergency landing on Thursday after its wheel fell off into a parking lot damaging several cars.
The flight, bound for Japan, was redirected to Los Angeles, where it landed safely.
A video shared online showed wheel dropping moments after the United Airlines plane took off from San Francisco International Airport into a parking lot used by airport employees.
Calling it a maintenance issue, John Cox, a retired pilot said, “I don’t see any impact for Boeing as it was a United maintenance team that changed the tire.”
The Boeing 777 has six wheels on each of its main landing struts and can land safely even if any wheel is missing or damaged, according to United Airlines.
“In aviation, we never want to have single points of failure if they can be avoided, and this is a case in point,” said Alan Price, a former chief pilot for Delta Air Lines.
“The remaining tires are fully capable of handling the load,” he added.
This comes amidst Boeing facing a number of quality control issues, with the most recent one in January, when a door-sized panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off the fuselage after the jet took off in Portland, Oregon, triggering a 19-day grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 9s.
Last week, US regulators instructed Boeing 90 days to develop a plan to solve quality control shortcomings, with the FAA director stating that the corporation must “commit to real and profound improvements.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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