A Boeing 777 passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff yesterday, Thursday, from a San Francisco airport on a flight to Japan, after one of its tires fell in the airport parking lot.
A video clip posted on the Internet shows the tire falling from the United Airlines plane seconds after it took off from San Francisco International Airport.
The “Cron 4” website reported that the tire fell in a parking lot used by airport employees and caused damage to several cars, according to airport officials, before the plane was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport, where it landed.
United Airlines reported that 249 passengers were on board the plane bound for Osaka.
United said that there are 6 tires in each landing strut on the Boeing 777, and they are designed to land the plane safely even if some of them are lost or damaged.
Multiple problems
Boeing has recently faced a series of quality control problems, the latest of which was in January when a door separated from the fuselage of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 after it took off from Portland, Oregon.
No one was hurt in the accident, but all Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft were grounded for 19 days.
Last week, US regulators gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to address quality control issues, and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the company must “commit to real and profound improvements.”
Last Monday, the US Aviation Authority announced that it had found “multiple problems” in the production practices of the aircraft company “Boeing” during an investigation it conducted after a fuselage panel exploded in the air on a 737 MAX flight.
The FAA said it found “several cases”; “Boeing and parts supplier Spirit Aerosystems apparently failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.”
“The FAA has identified issues of non-compliance in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts processing and storage, and product control,” the agency added, adding that the investigation into Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems is ongoing.
