Boeing 777 loses tire while taking off from SF, crushing cars on the ground

https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1765857050188259374

by EarthIsHome • 2 years ago

98 83 2 years ago

twitter.com

rvba• 2 years ago

Who manufactures plane tires? How much do they cost?

What about fighters and bombers?

JonathonW• 2 years ago

The same companies that manufacture car tires-- Goodyear, Bridgestone, Michelin, and probably most of the other major manufacturers (but those three definitely all have aircraft tire businesses).

They're probably not cheap.

93po• 2 years ago

About $6000 per tire in the one source I found, which lasts anywhere from 2 to 4 months depending on how many times a day it lands. Bridgestone manufacturers tires for the 777 but it’s not clear if they made the one that fell off

fotta3• 2 years ago

takeoff around 11:24am: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haRC034bj-g

landing around 1:17pm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkdKhZSZiSM

towed to the gate about 10min after landing

you'll have to scrub because the streams are still live and I don't know how to timestamp a live stream

slt2021• 2 years ago

whats the time on the screen?

fotta3• 2 years ago

11:24am and 1:17pm

ro_bit• 2 years ago

Why did the plane go all the way to LAX rather than landing back at SFO? It clearly seemed to be considered serious since there were emergency vehicles by the runway as a precaution. Is it easier to divert to LAX rather than land back at SFO in this situation?

WorkerBee28474• 2 years ago

If you don't have to land with a full load of fuel it's better not to.

And there was no reason to think that the landing would go wrong, because the tires are redundant.

gamblor956• 2 years ago

They were above-weight for an emergency landing at SFO. Also, with the loss of one tire, even if they were within weight for an emergency landing, the additional pressure on the remaining tires from the full fuel takes could have caused a catastrophic incident.

In other words, it was safer for the plane to continue to its destination, since the reduced weight from fuel consumption during the flight would make a landing safer and the remaining tires less likely to explode.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

SFO only has one NS runway open now. Mucking the other would be a show stopper and the others are usually departure only.

Symbiote• 2 years ago

Any unscheduled landing due to a fault with the aircraft is met with emergency vehicles, even if the reason is minor.

stainablesteel• 2 years ago

the story that never ends...

plussed_reader• 2 years ago

...what's that? Winning the lottery?

MBCook3• 2 years ago

I would think this is most likely a failure by the maintenance department and not Boeing themselves but wow do they not need to be in headlines again.

hughesjj2• 2 years ago

Normally I'd agree, but these days I ain't going if it's boeing and I honestly wouldn't assume that anymore.

gumby• 2 years ago

Hmm, seems I'm not the only one.

Zigurd3• 2 years ago

If it is a maintenance failure, it's a really big one. You would have to change the tire (really the whole wheel) before this flight, not put the wheel nut on, and not put the wheel nut lock on, and close the wheel nut cover without having done that, probably with a second person there, and have the wheel somehow stay on while taxiing. I think I see the brakes still on the axle in the video, so I suppose this is what happened.

seanmcdirmid• 2 years ago

I once saw four tires pop off on a modded hatchback racing down third ring road in Beijing around 2AM in the morning. The only way that could have happened is if the guy just got the car from the shop and someone forgot to add any lug nuts at all. Completely believable in China I guess.

MBCook3• 2 years ago

Oh I agree. The idea of forgetting to secure a tire, even without knowing the aviation specific bits, is clearly a HUGE mistake.

But I just don’t see any other way this could happen unless the tire was secured and just that part of the axle broke off which seems incredible unlikely in general, let alone compared to human fallibility.

barelyauser• 2 years ago

They are literally falling apart at this point...

mschuster91• 2 years ago

One thing I won't ever understand is why we allow large airports to be located in a way that puts any kind of infrastructure, be it residential, commercial, transportation or recreational, under the flight path for critical phases (i.e. start/land). Right where I used to work there's a memorial placard for a plane that crashed in 1960 due to an engine failure [1], and maybe five minutes worth of walking from where I grew up is another memorial for a plane that failed to start, crashed into a house and led to the deaths of, among others, a significant number of players of the ManU squad [2].

There have been so many incidents and near-incidents that it should be a no-brainer, but eh, guess it's more important to have airports closer to (or even worse, inside) cities. Yes, yes, I know, airplane travel is one of the safest modes of transportation there is, but still, a dominant majority of accidents in commercial aviation happens during landing and takeoff [3]. GA is a bit different because it seems that a lot of GA pilots fuck up maneuvering [4], but still, takeoff and landing account for about half the incidents.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugzeugungl%C3%BCck_am_17._De...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_air_disaster

[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/31529/most-airplane-accidents...

[4] https://www.redbirdflight.com/landing/general-aviation-accid...

heironimus• 2 years ago

If I live within two miles of an airport, directly on the flight path, what are the odds of my house being damaged by a plane versus burning down by other causes, damaged by a falling tree, struck by lightning, etc. I don’t know, but am certain it’s negligible comparatively.

psunavy03• 2 years ago

They did generally put airports out in the middle of the sticks . . . and then stuff grew up around them.

imbnwa• 2 years ago

Taking off from O’Hare airport in Chicago typically requires ascending over miles of residential neighborhoods

kortilla• 2 years ago

There is more risk allowing homes to be built on streets where cars go.

callalex• 2 years ago

You’re confused about why transit hubs, whose purpose is to move people, are built where the people are?

mcv3• 2 years ago

People generally want to travel from areas with lots of people, to other areas with lots of people. So cities.

There has actually been a proposal to move Schiphol (Amsterdam Airport) to an artificial island in the North Sea, because Schiphol is producing a lot of noise pollution for the surrounding towns. (And not just that; my sister used to play hockey on fields under an approach, and sometimes the field would smell like kerosine.)

But such a move would dramatically increase travel time to and from the city. Although maybe you could save time by having a dedicated train line and do checkin before getting in the train, passport check while on the train, etc.

ummonk• 2 years ago

Those cars are a lot less damaged than I’d have expected. Thank goodness no one was hurt.

NKosmatos2• 2 years ago

Could have been a really serious accident, luckily no injuries.

On the funny side of this, I hope their car insurance covers falling airplane tires :-)

tempestn2• 2 years ago

And somehow all the replies are blaming DEI or affirmative action. Twitter's really gone off the rails.

zerocrates3• 2 years ago

Somehow the "anti-DEI" people really latched on to Boeing. Not just Boeing themselves but also pilots for some reason... maybe spurred on by the fact that the pilots of the Alaska flight were both women? Not that the pilots did anything wrong in that incident, of course.

I can't really tell if the fact that Elon's been very active in this... let's call it "discourse," is a cause or symptom of it being so oddly widespread. Probably both: a vicious circle.

hughesjj2• 2 years ago

As yes, it was the female pilots who made MCAS and forgot to put the bolts on the door...

Like, I get that people have always been dumb, but man are they loud and aggressive about it these days

xdennis• 2 years ago

The left and the right live in completely separate bubbles. You may not be aware of this story, but the right is.

See https://www.faa.gov/pwdp . The Federal Aviation Administration has set a target of hiring people with "severe intellectual disability".

The Secretary of Transportation has set a hiring goal of three (3) percent per fiscal year for individuals with targeted (severe) disabilities.
Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. The targeted disabilities are:

    Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
    Vision (Blind)
    Missing Extremities
    Partial Paralysis
    Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
    Severe intellectual disability
    Psychiatric disability
    Dwarfism

Edit: If you're into podcasts, listen to this (partial) episode of Blocked and Reported about a different FAA scandal about flight controllers training (the tests were changed to promote trainees who hate science and love risk): https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/premium-the-faas-bizarr...

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

maybe spurred on by the fact that the pilots of the Alaska flight were both women? Not that the pilots did anything wrong in that incident, of course.

Witchcraft!

(But yeah, blaming the _pilot_ for the door plug falling out seems particularly perverse.)

klyrs2• 2 years ago

They don't like the optics of directly calling women and minorities inferior anymore, DEI is just a dogwhistle.

bassman9000• 2 years ago

assuming there's a statistically significant increase in these kind of accidents: what's your theory on why this is happening? what has change since e.g. 5-10 years ago?

tempestn2• 2 years ago

My personal theory would be that the change in Boeing management is catching up to them. But like the anti-DEI folks, all I have to base that on is rough correlation. I certainly wouldn't try to make a case based on that alone.

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

I 100% believe that there is a sizeable contingent of people that pay (more) attention to these things than they usually would. I am a tiny bit of a plane nerd. Weird shit happens with planes regularly, and not just Boeing ones. These events are increasingly making it to HN, and when they do, they’re getting far more traction than they usually do.

There is undoubtedly something fishy going on at Boeing, but that doesn’t mean that more commonplace accidents aren’t being comparatively overpublicised, or that they aren’t getting more traction than usual because there are now far more people waiting with baited breath to jump on anything that portrays Boeing negatively.

All I’m really saying that Boeing hate is now undoubtedly trendy, and that communities like HN are filled with people that have bought into the software engineer God complex enough to think that they can just intuitively understand something as complex as aviation. I’d barely consider myself anything more than a layperson but these Boeing incident threads are increasingly filled with people spouting BS. Again, there is certainly something going wrong at Boeing, but we are well into the territory where there’s a real need to separate signal from noise.

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

Well, first of all I don't actually think there is? It's clear that the 737 MAX is a particularly problematic design, but industry-wide incidents and accidents vs distance flown continue to fall, and have for decades; even _absolute_ numbers of deaths are falling, despite vastly more planes in the air.

As to the problems with Boeing in particular, they mostly look like cost-cutting and short-termism; the 737 MAX, for instance, is transparently an attempt to squeeze a few more years out of an ancient no-longer-fit-for-purpose design. And the decisions that lead to that were probably made more like _20_ years ago; Boeing should have started developing the 737 replacement quite a while ago. This would suggest that Boeing has poor leadership.

(You could also argue that some of it's the unfortunate reality of the markets; the markets _might_ punish Boeing for making necessary investments with very long pay-off times.)

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

Twitter artificially promotes bluetick replies, and most people who pay for Twitter are... a bit odd. I expect if you were to filter out the bluetick replies this effect would diminish a bit.

mcv3• 2 years ago

Well, fortunately Twitter doesn't show replies anymore. Not to me at least.

zerocrates3• 2 years ago

Obviously many eyes will be on Boeing given recent history but I don't know that there's a particular reason to suspect them. In this case I'd look first at possible maintenance issues on United's end, or possibly a manufacturing issue with the wheel/tire.

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

Yep. Completely logical. Boeing management is increasingly becoming a lightning rod for any issues that occur with Boeing planes.

kaycebasques• 2 years ago

I'm curious what the pilot's experience was like. Do I get a notification right away that a wheel fell off or was it a radio call from air traffic control? While I'm in flight, do I have a little camera or something where I can see the wheels? Because there's no way to actually go look at them when they're tucked away and you're flying, right? In other words how did they determine that they should still attempt a normal landing (I guess there aren't really any better other options though, are there?)

fotta3• 2 years ago

they have tire pressure sensors so I'm guessing that the pilot would get an alert that the tire pressure info for that tire disappeared

oynqr• 2 years ago

Boeing is going to fix this by installing tyre _presence_ sensors.

mjcl• 2 years ago

Someone has already stitched together the ATC/plane radio traffic[1], it sounds like the pilots on the plane initially had no idea. Oakland departure had to tell the pilots that people on the ground saw something falling off the plane.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeGo79nRMwU

saalweachter• 2 years ago

So what I'm hearing here is, if I see a tire fall of a plane, I should, like, tell someone, who can eventually get word back to the pilot.

2-718-281-8282• 2 years ago

there are dedicated LEDs in the main panel for each wheel indicating if it fell off

NKosmatos2• 2 years ago

Boeing shares seem unaffected by this event.

Poor Boeing, this is what happens when you lose your “soul” as a company and you start chasing margins, profit, dividends and you don’t pay attention to you people and your product.

Have seen it happening in many big companies, and I don’t understand why intelligent/educated/competent CEOs don’t see this :-(

nosmokewhereiam• 2 years ago

I believe airline sales may pale in comparison to Global Services revenue.

arthur_sav• 2 years ago

Boeing shares seem unaffected by this event.

Probably because it's considered too big to fail. It's pretty much backed by the US gov.

qsi• 2 years ago

More likely because it's a maintenance issue at the airline, and not a structural issue at Boeing, especially given the 777's solid track record over decades service.

SAI_Peregrinus• 2 years ago

Tires are a wear item. They get replaced often, by the airline maintenance personnel. On this >20 year old plane, it's far more likely to be United's issue than Boeing's. I'd expect United to see a share price hit if anyone did.

Atotalnoob• 2 years ago

I have a flight coming up on United’s 777s out of SFO…. Fantastic

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

Don’t buy into this hype. Consider how many 777 flights have had absolutely no issue, and that commonplace redundancies made this a relative non-issue for passengers.

nunez• 2 years ago

Don't fret.

You're hearing about this because aviation accidents _don't_ happen.

Boeing is under serious fire largely because of four (extremely terrible) accidents.

Hundreds of thousands of planes fly every day.

Source: I fly 100k+ miles per year for work and leisure.

hnburnsy2• 2 years ago

You're hearing about this because aviation accidents _don't_ happen

I can't tell if you are serious, but I count 7 commercial aviation accidents in the past week...

https://avherald.com/

tycho-newman• 2 years ago

I mean,the plane still worked. Props to Boeing for making flying jalopies that fall apart, but not fatally.

That is capitalism at work! You want planes with wheels that don't fall off? Buy an Airbus built by those communist Belgians. Just be prepared for your lower stock yields.

Zigurd3• 2 years ago

The video shows that the tire didn't come apart. It looks like the wheel came off with the tire attached. For just the tire to fall off whole, lots of bolts holding the two-piece rims together would have to not be bolted, and half the rim would come off, anyway, vs. one big nut holding the wheel to the hub.

Still, hard to believe either way: The wheel nut should have something like 250nm of torque, and it has a locking device, and swapping a wheel is a two-man job.

anon-sre-srm2• 2 years ago

Accrual of under-examined metal fatigue likely occurred. This points to serious deficiencies in inspection.

2-718-281-8282• 2 years ago

i'm wondering what platform could presently take twitter's place for publishing news like this? twitter gets a lot of flak here for political reasons. but it seems it nonetheless serves a societal purpose.

krapp• 2 years ago

Twitter is a content aggregator. It doesn't publish news. The Twitter post links to the site "unusual whales" which provides an incomplete text of the story which you can find verbatim on numerous news sites, likely aggregated into numerous other news feeds, any of which could serve as a more authoritative source.

There is no unique value-add from Twitter in this case, except to push the visibility of some random crypto news site.

mcv3• 2 years ago

Any Fediverse site works. Most are more publicly accessible than Twitter (no limited number of views, and you can actually see replies). The big advantage is that every organisation can run their own server and not be dependent on a single company.

a_gnostic• 2 years ago

Someone is trying to make this company real cheap…?

nojvek• 2 years ago

I did a Boeing factory tour back in the day.

At the end of the tour they made everyone say “I ain’t going, if it’s not Boeing” as a way to celebrate their superior plane.

Ironically the mantra now is

“If it’s Boeing, it ain’t going”

Oh how times have changed.

Whatarethese• 2 years ago

Great piece on Boeing from Last Week Tonight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

mike503• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

Profit over all else, capitalism!

Boeing 777 loses tire while taking off from SF, crushing cars on the ground

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