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

[Zigurd]

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-srm]

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

[zerocrates]

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.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

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

[kaycebasques]

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?)

[mjcl]

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

[fotta]

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

[2-718-281-828]

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

[fotta]

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

[ro_bit]

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?

[slt2021]

whats the time on the screen?

[nojvek]

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.

[NKosmatos]

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 :-(

[SAI_Peregrinus]

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.

[nosmokewhereiam]

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

[arthur_sav]

> 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.

[ummonk]

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

[NKosmatos]

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 :-)

[MBCook]

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.

[Zigurd]

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.

[hughesjj]

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

[Whatarethese]

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

[2-718-281-828]

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.

[mcv]

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.

[krapp]

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.

[rvba]

Who manufactures plane tires? How much do they cost?

What about fighters and bombers?

[JonathonW]

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.

[Atotalnoob]

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

[nunez]

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.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

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.

[a_gnostic]

Someone is trying to make this company real cheap…?

[mike503]

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

Profit over all else, capitalism!

[barelyauser]

They are literally falling apart at this point...

[tempestn]

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

[zerocrates]

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.

[rsynnott]

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.

[klyrs]

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

[mcv]

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

[bassman9000]

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?

[barbazoo]

Except that Boeing has nothing to do with the maintenance of that airplane

[MattGaiser]

Boeing doesn't do most of the maintenance on the plane, so I suspect this one has nothing to do with them at all.

[tycho-newman]

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.

[stainablesteel]

the story that never ends...

[plussed_reader]

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

[mschuster91]

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...

[callalex]

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

[psunavy03]

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

[heironimus]

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.

[mcv]

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.

[kortilla]

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

[imbnwa]

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