Earlier this week, I was watching the TV program called “Air Disasters.” In this episode, a chartered Canadian jetliner was flying a large group of passengers that had made their pilgrimage to Mecca and were now flying home to I believe one of the African countries. As the plane made its way down the runway for t/o, a tire exploded and the wheel was exposed to the runway and it became red hot.
After t/o, it’s only normal for the pilot to raise the landing gear. The rim of the blown tire had become red hot. When the gear is raised, they normally will fold under the wings, which is exactly where the fuel tanks are located. This caused the plane to catch fire; first to the underbelly or flooring, which in turn, caused passengers to begin falling out of the plane while still belted into their seat.
It took a few minutes before the pilots understood the severity of the problem. I think they understood the problem because many of the hydraulics and electric wiring run through the flooring. All of a sudden, the pilots no longer have control of their plane. BTW, they did start to return to the airport that they t/o from. Obviously, they never were able to return and crashed about two miles from the airport killing everyone.
My flashback was that I had a similar occurrence back in the early 2000’s. We were flying down to Miami from Newark in the early evening in a Boeing 757 with about 225 souls onboard. The F/O was doing the flying while I manned the radio and instruments. Just as we lifted off, we both heard a sound like a gunshot. We looked at each other and almost at the same time said, “Blowout!” I radioed the tower and told them that we just blew a tire, but were climbing. The ATC asked if we wanted to return. I thought about it for a moment and decided that we would deal with in Miami.
Once we began our decent into Miami, I advised the ATC that we had a blown tire on one of our undercarriage bogies. She asked if we were declaring an emergency. I told her no. We landed without incident and proceeded to our gate. The difference between our blowout and the one in the TV program was that on the other plane, they continued down the runway for a short distance after they heard the tire blow allowing the tire to chew off the rim and then heat up the rim to becoming red hot. Our tire blew out just as we lifted off.
Had the pilots realized that the noise they heard was a blown tire and not raised the gear, they may have been able to save their plane. Talk about hindsight.
After t/o, it’s only normal for the pilot to raise the landing gear. The rim of the blown tire had become red hot. When the gear is raised, they normally will fold under the wings, which is exactly where the fuel tanks are located. This caused the plane to catch fire; first to the underbelly or flooring, which in turn, caused passengers to begin falling out of the plane while still belted into their seat.
It took a few minutes before the pilots understood the severity of the problem. I think they understood the problem because many of the hydraulics and electric wiring run through the flooring. All of a sudden, the pilots no longer have control of their plane. BTW, they did start to return to the airport that they t/o from. Obviously, they never were able to return and crashed about two miles from the airport killing everyone.
My flashback was that I had a similar occurrence back in the early 2000’s. We were flying down to Miami from Newark in the early evening in a Boeing 757 with about 225 souls onboard. The F/O was doing the flying while I manned the radio and instruments. Just as we lifted off, we both heard a sound like a gunshot. We looked at each other and almost at the same time said, “Blowout!” I radioed the tower and told them that we just blew a tire, but were climbing. The ATC asked if we wanted to return. I thought about it for a moment and decided that we would deal with in Miami.
Once we began our decent into Miami, I advised the ATC that we had a blown tire on one of our undercarriage bogies. She asked if we were declaring an emergency. I told her no. We landed without incident and proceeded to our gate. The difference between our blowout and the one in the TV program was that on the other plane, they continued down the runway for a short distance after they heard the tire blow allowing the tire to chew off the rim and then heat up the rim to becoming red hot. Our tire blew out just as we lifted off.
Had the pilots realized that the noise they heard was a blown tire and not raised the gear, they may have been able to save their plane. Talk about hindsight.