Southern Air 747 accident in ANC
Anchorage runway closed after jet blows tires during landing Anchorage Daily News (CASEY GROVE) 09/11/2012 11:59 AM
A jumbo cargo jet flying with only backup power landed in Anchorage early Tuesday, blowing out most of its tires in the process, according to airport officials.
The incident still had one of the runways at Alaska's busiest airport closed as of noon Tuesday.
A Southern Air Boeing 747 was headed from the Lower 48 to Asia when the plane's four main power generators quit working, said Trudy Wassel, business manager at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Two backup generators kicked on, but they do not power a mechanism on the 300- to 400-ton jet that keeps its tires from skidding, Wassel said.
"They had to use manual brakes that had no anti-skid," Wassel said.
The crew decided to make an emergency landing in Anchorage, and firefighters rushed to the runway prepared for the worst: a fiery crash.
Of the jet's 18 tires, 14 blew out when it landed about 2 a.m. Tuesday, Wassel said. Only the flight crew was onboard, and nobody was injured, she said.
The plane remained sitting on the runway, 7 Left or 7L, Tuesday morning while crews worked to fix it and figure out what happened. 7L is one of two east-west runways at the airport. The adjacent runway, 7 Right, was closed for maintenance unrelated to the emergency landing, Wassel said.
Wassel said she did not know at what point in the flight the generators gave out or what caused the failure. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration were looking into the incident, she said.
Airport officials say there are no delays with the runway shutdown.
"We have other runways, so we're fully operational with that plane there," Wassel said.
All of the tires on the plane -- which still carried the logo of its previous owner, Saudi Air -- had been replaced by 2 p.m. Airport officials expected it to be towed out of the way, with runway 7 Left to be reopened by 2:30 or 3 p.m.