Posted on 08/06/2009 9:52:43 PM PDT by Steelfish
Jet lands safely in L.A. after tire blows Incident occurred upon takeoff, FAA confirms nose gear failure
Aug 6, 2009
LOS ANGELES - A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman says an Alaska Airlines jet has landed safely at Los Angeles International Airport after a tire blew during takeoff.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor says Flight 6 had just taken off for Washington National Airport on Thursday when the pilot reported a possible blown tire on the nose gear and declared an emergency.
The Boeing 737-800 landed without incident at 3:04 p.m.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Don’t these craft have run-flat tires?
“Don’t these craft have run-flat tires?”
Sounds like it did run flat. ;-)
Seriously, there’s not a lot of gee-whiz protection when a tire is zipping along at ~170 mph. Consider that there’s a big difference between 65 mph (car speeds) and 170 mph (God help us airplane speeds). A failed tire, of any design, will disintegrate at the operational speeds we’re talking about.
Consider also where the nose tire fragments will be heading immediately after they come off the rim. That’s right! The engine intakes. There’s a bit of personal experience here. It is enough to point out that the mere loss of a tire is a lot less trouble than “shrapnelling” the aircraft and powerplants in the process of said disintegration.
Tires fail on rare occasions (very rare). But when they do, the induced complications can be .... interesting.
The run-flat design contains a rigid disk attached to the wheel, inside the tire. When the tire loses air, the wheel runs on the disk.
Indeed, but I have never noted an implimentation of that technology on an airliner. As I said, I doubt that a tire incorporating run flat technology would fair any better (ie. retaining its structural integrity) than a conventional tire. The forces encountered at the speeds we’re talking about are tremendous and everything has to work properly.
As I said, the danger in a tire failure is not loss of pressure or even directional control (the flight surfaces increasingly control runway tracking as the aircraft approaches Vr). The concern is all about the damage that is going to be done to the airframe and powerplants when the rubber starts flying. Conventional or run-flat, a tire will come apart at Vr.
Sorry. I should have said a BAD tire will come apart at Vr.
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